Analysis Of The Effects Of Carbon Taxes On Carbon-intensive Industries Competitiveness

With the average global temperature rising continuously recent years, the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide is getting increasing attention by the international community. As a developing country, China emits a high level of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, and the growth is accelerating. Having surpassed the U.S. as the country of largest carbon dioxide emissions in the world since2006, China faces enormous pressure to reduce emissions. Therefore, the Chinese government made a commitment in2009Copenhagen Climate Conference, to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by40%to45%before2020on the basis of its level in2005. To achieve this tough goal, the levy of carbon taxes in China has become irresistible.As the carbon tax directly increase the production cost of carbon-intensive industries, which are generally oligopolistic industries and often play pivotal roles in national economy, whether it can be successfully implemented is depended on the influence that carbon taxes have on carbon-intensive industries. Therefore, the thesis select the meso-economic angle as the research perspective, and the core issue to be studied is how levying a national carbon tax affects the competitiveness of domestic carbon-intensive industries in an oligopolistic market.Given the foreign carbon tax policy, there are usually three kinds of effects that imposing a domestic carbon tax will bring, which are industry competitiveness effect, environmental effect and price effect. In the aspect of industry competitiveness effect, the reduction of total output and market share of domestic industries shows that a carbon tax will lower the competitiveness of domestic carbon-intensive industries; while the change of gross profits shows a vague conclusion that, because the slope of the market demand curve is influenced by market concentration, the effect of carbon taxes on industry competitiveness is uncertain, In addition, the carbon tax promotes the elimination of uncompetitive carbon-intensive industries, industrial restructuring and technological innovation in the long run, both of which are conducive to the chronic development of the national economy. In the aspect of environmental effect, levying a carbon tax is beneficial for not only reducing national carbon emissions, but also promoting the global energy conservation, which are just in line with the original intention of the introduction of the carbon tax. In the aspect of price effect, the carbon tax cause a rise of price in both foreign and domestic markets, making consumers face greater price distortions under the new equilibrium, and increase the net welfare loss for consumers.