Q53 - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; RecyclingReturn

This article investigates the relationship between environmentally related taxes introduced in OECD countries and air pollution, represented by carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emission levels in the atmosphere. The article makes a statistical analysis of data on environmental taxes, specifically energy and transport taxes, and other variables that might affect air quality in the OECD member countries. The ARDL model used on the panel data of all OECD member countries shows statistical significance in only one out of five models. A subsequent comparative analysis of the reduced sample of OECD countries that are members of the EU exhibits a statistically significant effect of environmentally related tax revenues on the air emission levels, indicating that this relationship is present in the reduced sample.

Environmental information disclosure instruments inevitably also carry information costs. It is important to pay attention to these costs because of the competitiveness issues connected with the regulatory burden of the private sector or the overall cost-effectiveness of different types of environmental regulation from the public sector point of view. We undertake an ex-post analysis to quantify and analyse reporting costs of private sector induced by the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR). We focus on the case of the Czech Republic. The average annual reporting costs, additional to other reporting duties, are € 365 per facility. The Czech PRTR comprises 8 times more facilities than required by the European law, and thereby increases correspondingly the total reporting costs. The best predictor variable of the costs is the need for measuring or calculating additional releases or transfers beyond the information requirements of other registers.