The long and short-term effects of environmental tax on energy efficiency: Perspective of OECD energy tax and vehicle traffic tax

Abstract

Based on the data from 1995 to 2016 in the OECD countries, we use the autoregressive distribution lag (ARDL) model to empirically study the overall effect of energy taxes, vehicle traffic taxes, and environmental taxes on energy efficiency. It was found that the energy tax significantly improves energy efficiency in the short term, the vehicle traffic tax significantly improves energy efficiency in the long term, and the environmental tax improves energy efficiency in the long and short term, and is more significant in the long term. And the industrial structure upgrade helps strengthen the impact of environmental taxes on energy efficiency. The grouping study shows that the environmental tax of the high GDP group has a more significant effect on improving energy efficiency. When the environmental tax of the low GDP group improves energy efficiency, the synergy of industrial structure upgrade should be emphasized. The research in this paper is helpful to understand the internal impact mechanism of environmental taxes on energy efficiency in OECD countries, and has reference significance for the study of environmental taxes in non-OECD countries.