A gas station in Los Angeles. Of all 155 countries in the UCLA-led study, the U.S. has gone the longest without raising gasoline taxes: The national tax has been 18 cents per gallon since 1993. Credit: Sean Brenner/UCLA
Research study finds world leaders give up on increasing gas taxes and reducing subsidies to producers.
Around the world, governments have widely attempted two strategies meant to reduce the use of gasoline by making it more expensive.
One is implementing taxes in order to raise the price that consumers pay at the pump; the other is cutting back on the longstanding subsidies that governments have provided to producers, with the goal of making gas more costly for companies to sell.
However, a new study found that such reforms are curtailed so quickly that they are not being given a chance to have any effect. The authors concluded that presidents, prime ministers, and monarchs are highly constrained in their ability to change gas taxes and subsidies, uncovering a reality that may be tough for supporters of carbon pricing to swallow. The study, which was led by the University of California, Los Angeles, was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study is the most extensive and far-reaching analysis of carbon pricing to date. The researchers discovered that 62% of the time, the tax increases and subsidy reductions were rescinded within one year. And 87% of the time, they were scrapped within five years.
Michael Ross, the paper’s lead author, a DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2208024119
