Existing studies that find large effects of carbon taxes in other countries tend to be overly optimistic in their assessment by focusing on individual sectors alone. Nevertheless, no formal empirical impact estimates assess whether the tax has been measurably effective in reducing aggregate CO 2 emissions since its introduction. The tax has been widely hailed as a success-both in popular perception as well as in its impact on consumer demand for fossil fuels, natural gas, and lack of impact on economic output (Murray and Rivers 2015). Here I assess the effectiveness of a carbon tax in reducing emissions by studying the impacts of the introduction of the first major carbon tax in North America: the carbon tax in British Columbia (BC), Canada introduced in 2008. However, the impact on aggregate emissions is an important metric since anthropogenic climate change is driven by cumulative CO 2 emissions, mitigation of which requires aggregate reductions. Existing studies that do look at the tax impact of emissions predominantly focus on single sector emissions (such as transportation) rather than assessing the aggregate impact. Despite emission-reductions being their primary aim, few of the existing carbon taxes have been evaluated for their effectiveness in reducing emissions at observed tax rates. Mitigation of future climate change requires stringent curtailment of CO 2 emissions and carbon taxes have emerged as a tool-of-choice in numerous policy proposals (including the EU Green Deal) to implement these reductions (Carattini et al.
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