GDL

Ecological taxes are categorically different from the classical taxes that seek to extract


a certain revenue at a minimum excess burden. Classical taxes are levied so as to


interfere with the market-based allocation of resources as little as possible. Ecological


taxes, on the other hand, are designed to achieve a well-defined ecological effect again


at a minimum of excess burdens. The revenue of an ecological tax, however, is coin-


cidental and nil when the tax is ecologically optimal. Most ecological taxes currently


proposed are not ecologically optimal as they are defined here. In generating revenues,


they partly miss the ecological objective. The tax revenue is an indication that the


ecologically relevant decisions of some agents in the jurisdiction have not been affected


so as to achieve the desired ecological result.


This paper explores the law and economics of ecological taxation from this point of


view. The question is: How can an optimal ecological tax be institutionally structured so


as to have a maximum impact on ecologically relevant decisions in the desired scope


and direction? The paper systematically explores and applies the work contained in


James M. Buchanan’s Cost and Choice: An Inquiry in Economic Theory (1969) to this


question and derives an innovative institutional solution. 1999 by Elsevier Science Inc.

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