Convergence trends of environmental taxation in European countries

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to analyse peculiarities of building an environmental tax systems, examining the level of their convergent (divergent) relationships. Main contribution of the paper lies in testing of the hypothesis of existing convergence processes in architecture of environmental tax systems of European countries (as the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic) on the basis of panel data analysis for the set of European countries using the regression model in Stata 12/SE and MS Excel. Testing the hypothesis about the existence of convergence in construction of environmental tax system of the above mentioned European countries was realized on the base of analysis of coefficients of panel data regression analysis (both fixed effects and random effects models) – for beta convergence and variation coefficient – for sigma convergence. Such parameters as environmental tax revenue (for air pollution) to general tax revenues ratio, %; environmental tax revenue (for water pollution) to general tax revenues ratio, %; environmental tax revenue (for waste management) to general tax revenues ratio, % were chosen as measures of environmental tax system characteristics. Empirical research results confirmed hypothesis of the presence of β-convergence and σ-convergence in the context environmental tax systems of chosen countries.