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A comparative study of carbon tax and fuel tax based on panel spatial econometric model

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Abstract

The balance between economic development and environmental governance has always been the focus of attention, and this has become a key issue facing in China. In recent years, the means of improving the environment through taxation are common, and it is more in line with China’s national conditions. Carbon tax and fuel tax are considered to be effective environmental supervision measures, and the implementation of this policy is bound to have a critical impact on the advance of economic level. However, the implementation effects of these two mechanisms may be different, and they may also have various effects on regional development. Therefore, based on the panel data of China’s 29 provinces from 2008 to 2018, we adopt the spatial autocorrelation method to explore the relationship between the economic levels of various areas. Then, establishing the panel spatial econometric model of economic growth and carbon tax, economic growth and fuel tax respectively to compare the implementation effects of the two tax policies. It turns out that there is a positive correlation between the economic growth of 29 provinces in China. And whether choosing to levy carbon tax or fuel tax, they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. Finally, according to the results of empirical analysis results, some relevant policy suggestions are put forward.

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The author declares that the data found in support of this study are publicly available, and the data source is provided in the paper.

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Funding

This paper is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.71964022) and North China Electric Power University Central University Fund (Grant No.2014MS150).

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Yanmei Li: conceptualization, validation, resources, review and editing, supervision, data curation, funding acquisition, and project administration. Jiawei Song: methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, and writing—original draft preparation. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yanmei Li.

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Li, Y., Song, J. A comparative study of carbon tax and fuel tax based on panel spatial econometric model. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 15931–15945 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16650-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16650-z

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