Erik Kempe Award
CIRED congratulates Adrien Fabre and Thomas Douenne, winners of the Erik Kempe Award in Environmental and Resource Economics from the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE) for their paper Yellow Vests, Pessimistic Beliefs, and Carbon Tax Aversion.
Abstract
Using a representative survey, we find that after the Yellow Vests movement, French people would largely reject a tax & dividend policy, i.e., a carbon tax whose revenues are redistributed uniformly to each adult. They overestimate their net monetary losses, wrongly think that the policy is regres- sive, and do not perceive it as environmentally effective. We show that changing people’s beliefs can substantially increase support. Although significant, the effects of our informational treat- ments on beliefs are small. Indeed, the respondents that oppose the tax tend to discard positive information about it, which is consistent with distrust, uncertainty, or motivated reasoning.