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Environmental taxation: a green stick or a green carrot for corporate social performance?

✍ Scribed by Alain Verbeke; Chris Coeck


Publisher
John Wiley and Sons
Year
1997
Tongue
English
Weight
120 KB
Volume
18
Category
Article
ISSN
0143-6570

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✦ Synopsis


Environmental taxes have recently become a popular tool of environmental policy in many countries. Their increased use reflects the belief that taxes provide stronger incentives than conventional (physical) regulation. In addition, a system of environmental taxes may also lead to increased funding for government programmes.

This paper develops a management oriented conceptual framework for analysing the impact of environmental taxes on corporate social performance. One of the main conclusions arising from this framework is that an environmental taxation system may lead to an unintended reduction of the affected firms' willingness to respect and support public environmental policies. As a result, environmental taxes may lead to perverse incentives and emerging strategies of cheating behaviour in the long run.