Research On The Economic Effects Of Fiscal And Tax Policies For Energy Saving

The fossil energy has played a pivotal role to human economic development andsocial progress since the industrial revolution. However, the large-scale utilization ofenergy resources has brought the shortage of resources and environmental problems inthe global, and has been a serious threat to human sustainable development. As theworld’s largest developing country, China also faces the same problems. Since reformand opening-up, China Chinese has relied on extensive economic growth mode inpromoting economic growth, at the same time also brought the imbalance betweensupply and demand of energy resources, increasingly strident environmental problemsand difficult to guarantee energy security. In the face of the rigid demand for energycaused by the accelerating industrialization and urbanization in the future, energy savingwill be the only way to realize the sustainable development of our country. Governmentmust support and guide the energy conservation activities which have obviouslyexternality and public characteristic and couldn’t be adjusted with the marketmechanism. As the most flexible and effective tool of government in macroeconomicregulation and control, the fiscal and tax policies play an important role in energyconservation activities and have been more and more recognization. Therefore,exploring the mechanism and effect of action of the government fiscal and taxationpolicies for energy conservation activities and evaluating the effects of fiscal andtaxation policies in our country, will not only benefit to speed up the level of job aboutenergy conservation, but also has a strong practical significance to realize thesustainable development of social economy.This paper analysis the reason of government and its fiscal and tax policies topromote energy conservation and discusses the mechanism of the fiscal and taxationpolicies on energy conservation activities using the theory analysis method; This paperalso empirically analyses the efficiency of the fiscal and tax policies for energy savingand influence factors, in turn mades relevant simulation analysis respectively using theDEA-Tobit model and dynamic CGE model; In addition, researches the implementationof the fiscal and tax policies for energy saving in several countries using comparativeanalysis method. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the economic mechanism andeffect of fiscal and tax policies for energy saving and improving energy efficiency, and to provide theoretical basis and supportive method in order to perfect our country’sfiscal and taxation policies on energy saving, and to better promote the work level ofenergy saving in our country by improving the efficiency of the fiscal and tax policiesfor energy saving. Specific research ideas are as follows: firstly, on the basis ofreasonable defining of concept of energy saving and fiscal and tax policies, this paperthoroughly discusses the cause and the practical significance of the government’s fiscaland tax policies for energy conservation activities using the theory of sustainabledevelopment, government regulation theory, externality theory and public goods theory,and to provide strong support for later discussion; Secendly, this paper exploreseconomic mechanisms about the government’s fiscal and tax policies for energy savingmainly from three aspects including tax policies, fiscal policies, governmentprocurement policies and so on, and studies the integrated effect of fiscal and taxationpolicies on energy saving; And summarizing status of Chinese energy consumptionsince the reform and opening, this paper also emphatically analyzes present situation,existing problems and causes of the fiscal and tax policies for the energy saving in ourcountry since the "11th five-year plan"; Later, by building multi-level performanceevaluation index system including aspects of economic, social and environment, thispaper empirically analyses the efficiency of the fiscal and tax policies for energy savingand influence factors using DEA-Tobit method, the results show that the overallefficiency of the fiscal and tax policies for energy saving in China is relatively good, butthe difference in efficiency of regional and provincial is markedly, and the efficiency ofmost provinces is in lower level; This paper further simulates different energy savingpolicies combination and analyzes different influences on the economic growth andenvironmental improvement by building dynamic CGE model; In addition, this paperselect some representative countries such as United States, Japan and the EuropeanUnion,which has more rich energy-saving experiences, to compare and analyze, andsummarizes the foreign policies characteristic and the enlightenment to our countryabout the fiscal and tax policies for energy saving; Finally, following the energy savingdesign goals and principles of the fiscal and tax policies in our country, this paperrefines suggestions of the fiscal and tax policies on our country’s energy conservation,namely improving the energy-saving financial investment policies in respects of thesizes, scopes and tools and so on, optimizing resources tax, consumption tax, incometax and turnover tax which is associated with energy saving and introducingenvironmental tax at the appropriate time, strengthening the supporting functions of government procurement policy, and perfecting other relevant measures, etc.The innovation points of this paper are as follows: first, using the empiricalresearch method to implementing performance evaluation on fiscal and tax policies forenergy saving in our country are analyzes the factors that influence the efficiency ofpolicies, which isn’t involved in the used studies. By building multi-level performanceevaluation index system including aspects of economic, social and environment, thispaper empirically analyses the efficiency of the fiscal and tax policies for energy savingabout regions and provinces since the "11th five-year plan", results show that the overallefficiency of the fiscal and tax policies on energy saving in China is relatively good, butthe difference in efficiency of regional and provincial is markedly, and the efficiency ofmost provinces is in lower level, and this maybe influenced by factors of fiscaldecentralization, public participation, the level of economic development, and regionalcharacteristics and so on. Second, the input-output table of China in2010which is thelatest data, be divided into16departments and to be new SAM list using the top-downapproach, and then this paper builds dynamic CGE model to simulate the differentinfluences brought by different combinations of fiscal and tax policies to the economicgrowth and environmental improvement. The "environmental module" is restructuredaccording to the present situation and the research need in the process of building themodel, and the energy tax and carbon tax are designed in the different modules(production module, transaction module, the market relations module, etc.).Third,according to the phase of China’s energy conservation and the research purpose, thispaper mades comprehensive definition on the concept of the energy conservation andtheoretical discussion, And on this basis, this paper explores economic mechanisms andeconomic impacts on the production and consumption and other links of thegovernment’s fiscal and tax policies for energy saving, mainly from three aspectsincluding tax policies, fiscal policies, government procurement policies and so on.