Rentschler Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reforms

A Guide to Economic and Political Complexity
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-351-17580-7
Verlag: Taylor & Francis
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 252 Seiten

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Energy Policy

Countries around the world are spending close to $500 billion per year on subsidising fossil fuel consumption. The G20 countries alone spend another $450 billion on subsidising fossil fuel production. In addition, the indirect social welfare costs of these subsidies have been shown to be substantial – for instance due to air pollution, road congestion, climate change, and economic inefficiency to name a few. Considering these numbers, there is no doubt that fossil fuel subsidies cause severe economic distortions that compromise countries’ prospects of achieving equitable and sustainable development.

This book provides a guide to the complex challenge of designing, assessing, and implementing effective fossil fuel subsidy reforms. It shows that to reform subsidies means to understand and balance economic and political trade-offs, to mitigate adverse effects on vulnerable households, and to assist firms with implementing efficiency enhancing measures. Going beyond the purely fiscal perspective, this book emphasises that smart subsidy reforms can contribute to all three dimensions of sustainable development – environment, society, and economy. Over the course of eight chapters, this book considers a wide range of agents and stakeholders, markets, and policy measures in order to distil the key principles of designing effective fossil fuel subsidy reforms.

This book will be of great relevance to scholars and policy makers with an interest in energy economics and policy, climate change policy, and sustainable development more broadly.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rentschler, Jun

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Umwelt- und Gesundheitspolitik
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltpolitik, Umweltprotokoll
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Umweltökonomie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface

1 Introduction - and a guide for navigating this book

2 Reforming fossil fuel subsidies: Drivers, barriers, and the state of progress

3 The impacts on households: The regional variation of poverty effects due to subsidy

reform

4 The impacts on firms: Transmission channels and response measures

5 Energy price variation and competitiveness: Firm level evidence from Indonesia

6 General equilibrium effects of subsidy reform, and the role of tax evasion and

smuggling

7 Limits to green fiscal reform: Market distortions and the barriers to efficiency and

clean energy

8 Principles for designing effective fossil fuel subsidy reforms

Appendices

A Supplementary material to Chapter 5

B Supplementary material to Chapter 6

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Jun Rentschler is an Economist at the World Bank’s climate change department. Until 2017, he was a Doctoral Researcher at University College London (UCL), and a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, and at the Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. He has also worked as a consultant at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and as an Economic Adviser at the German Foreign Office. Jun holds a PhD in environmental and development economics from UCL.