A tax on the carbon content of fuels would be a less expensive way to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions than would a collection of policies such as “corporate average fuel economy” requirements for automobiles.
Responses
© 2025. Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets.
2%
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2%
5%
39%
51%
Responses weighted by each expert's confidence
© 2025. Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets.
0%
2%
4%
35%
59%
Participant |
University |
Vote |
Confidence |
Bio/Vote History |
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 Daron Acemoglu |
MIT | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Alberto Alesina |
Harvard | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Joseph Altonji |
Yale | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Alan Auerbach |
Berkeley | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 David Autor |
MIT | Bio/Vote History | ||
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See Chris Knittel's forthcoming paper in Journal of Economic Perspectives on this topic: Reducing Petroleum Consumption from Transportation
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 Katherine Baicker |
University of Chicago | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Taxing the externality would be much more efficient than CAFE - but the challenge is getting the tax rate right
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 Marianne Bertrand |
Chicago | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Raj Chetty |
Harvard | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Judith Chevalier |
Yale | Bio/Vote History | ||
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That is not to suggest that a carbon cap and trade program is necessarily worse than a tax. But CAFE worse.
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 Janet Currie |
Princeton | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 David Cutler |
Harvard | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Angus Deaton |
Princeton | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Darrell Duffie |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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The indirect route of fleet fuel standards causes distortions in the auto industry and fails to capture other sources of C02 emissions.
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 Aaron Edlin |
Berkeley | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Always better to be direct. So long as administration of a fuel tax is as easy as other indirect regulation it is better.
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 Barry Eichengreen |
Berkeley | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Ray Fair |
Yale | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Pinelopi Goldberg |
Yale | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Too vague... It is not clear how this tax would be implemented.
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 Claudia Goldin |
Harvard | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Austan Goolsbee |
Chicago | Bio/Vote History | ||
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the one is specifically aimed at carbon so seems almost tautological. not necess true for other considerations like natl security etc
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 Michael Greenstone |
University of Chicago | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Robert Hall |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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totally basic economics!
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 Bengt Holmström |
MIT | Bio/Vote History | ||
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If social cost sensitive to total emissions or hard to measure, quantity controls may be better than tax.
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 Caroline Hoxby |
Stanford | Did Not Answer | Bio/Vote History | |
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 Kenneth Judd |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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If the objective is to reduce GHGs then the best policy is to tax GHG emissions. CAFE standards will initially do little.
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 Anil Kashyap |
Chicago Booth | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Pete Klenow |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Would help equalize marginal cost across sources. Revenue can keep marginal tax rates on work, saving lower than otherwise.
-see background information here |
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 Edward Lazear |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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This compares two ineffective approaches. The magnitude of this problem is so great that no sufficient carbon tax is feasible worldwide.
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 Jonathan Levin |
Stanford | Bio/Vote History | ||
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In principle, yes. In practice, would depend a huge amount on the design of the tax vs other policies, so hard to give a blanket answer.
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 William Nordhaus |
Yale | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Many studies on this, see RfF on national energy policies, Dec 2010 as example.
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 Maurice Obstfeld |
Berkeley | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Cecilia Rouse |
Princeton | Bio/Vote History | ||
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I believe this to be the case in theory although in practice may be a more effective way to achieve environmental objectives.
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 Emmanuel Saez |
Berkeley | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 José Scheinkman |
Columbia University | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Richard Schmalensee |
MIT | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Hyun Song Shin |
Princeton | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 James Stock |
Harvard | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Nancy Stokey |
University of Chicago | Bio/Vote History | ||
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 Richard Thaler |
Chicago Booth | Bio/Vote History | ||
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Since a carbon tax is politically infeasible how about hiking the gas tax by a dollar and then index it. We now have a negative carbon tax.
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 Christopher Udry |
Northwestern | Bio/Vote History | ||
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This is as clear as economics gets; provides incentives to find minimally costly ways to reduce emissions.
-see background information here |
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 Luigi Zingales |
Chicago Booth | Bio/Vote History | ||
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