| Popis: |
Given the challenge of more restrictive environmental regulation in the near future, it is becoming more and more important to quantify the costs of such a policy. Policies aimed at significantly reducing environmental problems such as global warming, acid rain, deforestation, waste disposal or any other degradation of the quality of air, water, soil or land imply mostly drastic emission reductions. Obviously, the implementation of environmental policy instruments to improve the quality of the environment should not hinder other economic goals like GDP growth, international competitiveness or employment. The discussion whether there exists a “no regret” policy, that improves environmental quality without negative impacts on the economy has been held for a long time but has not yet lead to a conclusion. In principle, large emission reductions tend to have a significant impact on costs in one or several sectors of an economy. The implied change in relative prices will induce general equilibrium effects throughout the whole economy. For this reason it is often useful to evaluate the effect of environmental policy measures within the framework of a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. Models of this type are a computer representation of a national economy or a region of national economies, each of which consists of consumers, producers and a government. Consumers purchase goods from producers, supply factors of production, save, and pay all kind of taxes to, and receive transfer payments from, government. Producers supply goods, demand factors of production, invest, and pay also taxes or receive transfer payments. |
