G. Metcalf, "A Distributional Analysis of Green Tax Reforms." 
National Tax Journal,  December 1999

For discussion in class Wednesday, January 17th

This article is available through: Proquest, EBSCOhost, reserve desk

Instructions for using Proquest and EBSCOhost | Schaffer library electronic resources

Note: These questions are not distributed evenly through the article. Questions 1-9 involve the first three pages and questions 10-12 deal with most of the rest of the article.

1. What does Metcalf mean by the "distributional impact" of environmental taxes?
2. What is the primary purpose of this paper?
3. According to the "early literature" on environmental reform, how could taxes on pollution improve economic efficiency?
4. Does this paper primarily focus on the impact of environmental taxes on economic efficiency?
5. What does "tax incidence" mean?
6. How does Metcalf measure the well-being of households?
7. Use the web site http://www.icpsr.umich.edu to answer the following questions:
• What is ICPSR?

Click on "archive" and then search for descriptions (abstracts) of the two data sets that Metcalf uses:
• Briefly describe the Panel Study of Income Dynamics
• Briefly describe the Consumer Expenditure Survey
8. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using lifetime income rather than annual income as a measure of household well-being?
9. What "conventional assumptions" does Metcalf make about the incidence of individual taxes on wages, corporate taxes, and sales taxes?
10. Describe Metcalf’s basic strategy in his "tax shift analysis."
11. Briefly summarize the purpose and content of each table of data that Metcalf presents (Tables 1-9). The challenge here is to get the main idea without drowning in details. You do not have to deal with every detail!
12. Summarize Metcalf’s conclusions.