This paper presents the first study of the economic impacts of a carbon tax
on an environmentally delineated, sub-national area. The study is based on
a 32-sector computable general equilibrium model of the Susquehanna River
Basin (SRB) of the US. A special feature of the analysis is that it incorpo
rates changes in prices of traded goods facing the focal region as a result
of the imposition of a tax imposed globally. The results show that a tax o
f $16.96 per ton of carbon could have rather negligible negative impacts on
the SRB economy as a whole, but that the negative impacts on its energy in
dustries could be sizeable. Also, several sensitivity tests on closure rule
s and key parameter values indicate that the results are rather robust. (C)
1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.