{"title":"Can environmental taxes decrease final energy consumption in the old and new EU countries?","authors":"Tanja Fatur Šikić, Sabina Hodžić","doi":"10.1080/1331677x.2023.2271968","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Despite the harmonisation process within the EU area, there are many economic and political differences among European countries in promoting energy policies. Moreover, the status of implementation of environmental tax reforms in the new EU countries is very different from that in the old EU countries, and the economic and environmental impacts of such taxation are diverse. The objective of this paper was therefore to investigate whether the role of environmental taxes in reducing final energy consumption is the same in old and new EU countries. The analysis was conducted for 16 old and 11 new EU member states over the period 1995–2020 using Pooled Mean Group (PMG) and Mean Group (MG) estimators. The results indicate that environmental taxes have a negative long-term impact on final energy consumption in both groups of countries. However, this impact is much smaller in the new EU countries. Moreover, economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions increase final energy consumption. These results also suggest that in order to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, the new EU countries need to apply some stringent regulations and introduce further institutional and environmental reforms that support increasing the share of clean energy sources in the energy mix.","PeriodicalId":51450,"journal":{"name":"Economic Research-Ekonomska Istrazivanja","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Economic Research-Ekonomska Istrazivanja","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677x.2023.2271968","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"Economics, Econometrics and Finance","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Despite the harmonisation process within the EU area, there are many economic and political differences among European countries in promoting energy policies. Moreover, the status of implementation of environmental tax reforms in the new EU countries is very different from that in the old EU countries, and the economic and environmental impacts of such taxation are diverse. The objective of this paper was therefore to investigate whether the role of environmental taxes in reducing final energy consumption is the same in old and new EU countries. The analysis was conducted for 16 old and 11 new EU member states over the period 1995–2020 using Pooled Mean Group (PMG) and Mean Group (MG) estimators. The results indicate that environmental taxes have a negative long-term impact on final energy consumption in both groups of countries. However, this impact is much smaller in the new EU countries. Moreover, economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions increase final energy consumption. These results also suggest that in order to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, the new EU countries need to apply some stringent regulations and introduce further institutional and environmental reforms that support increasing the share of clean energy sources in the energy mix.
期刊介绍:
Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja publishes rigorous scientific papers which make a significant contribution to any field of economics – theoretical, applied or empirical – with special attention given to experiences of the transition from socialism to market economies in Eastern Europe. New research on regional development in other geographical areas is welcomed, particularly papers addressing theoretical and empirical issues in economics for countries in transition and former transitional economies. The journal encourages submissions that explore broad economic topics that can contribute to the development of economics as a discipline, discussing important economic issues both from an orthodox or heterodox point of view.