Environmental tax reforms, time use and horizontal inequality: an agent-based analysis

Guildford | 12 September 2023, 1pm (BST)

In this seminar, Dr Franziska Klein will speak to her agent-based system dynamics model, investigating the effects of an environmental tax reform.

Using an activity-based lifestyle approach with household heterogeneity on a number of different dimensions, three popular recycling channels for carbon tax revenues are analysed: (1) a reduction in income tax rates, (2) an equal per capita climate dividend, and (3) earmarking for green innovation.

The policy impact is assessed in terms of overall employment, energy use and distributional impacts based on several household characteristics. These include employment sector, gender and geographical location. Goods are produced using energy, as well as low- and high-wage labour inputs, all of which can be subject to innovation effects. In addition, firms can improve the energy efficiency of final goods.

Generating a survey-based household typology allows for empirically grounded estimates of unpaid labour, green consumption behaviours and preferences for leisure by household type. The results reveal considerable variety in policy impacts across distinct household types and revenue use categories.

About

Dr Franziska Klein is an interdisciplinary researcher at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin. She holds a PhD in Environmental Science & Technology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her research interests span the demand-side and political economy of climate policy, in particular carbon-pricing. Her prior research specialised on the nexus between work and sustainable consumption (or low-carbon lifestyles), with a focus on multi-dimensional inequality. Franziska is also interested in nature-society interactions more broadly. Her work employs both quantitative and qualitative methods.