공급사슬 상에서의 환경세 면제 정책의 영향

Although many countries have adopted environmental tax to curb firms’ emissions, they often include tax exemption policy for some industries to promote the industry competitiveness. This study investigates the impacts of environmental tax exemption, especially from a supply chain perspective. We consider a supply chain consisting of an upstream firm and a downstream firm, both of which generate pollution as a byproduct of their production process, and examine three scenarios: (1) both firms are imposed an environmental tax, (2) an upstream firm receives tax exemption, and (3) a downstream firm receives tax exemption. Interestingly, we find that environmental tax exemption on either upstream or downstream firm has significant environmental and economic externality on the other firm in the supply chain. That is, environmental tax exemption on the upstream firm not only increase the pollution and the profit of the upstream firm, but also raise the pollution and the profit of the downstream firm. The exemption on the downstream firm can also exhibit similar externality. These imply that the impacts of environmental tax exemption can be often underestimated, economically and environmentally, in the supply chain context. We also find that environmental tax exemption is not always more effective than no exemption policy from a broader perspective which considers both economic and environmental impacts in the supply chain. The exemption policy is more likely to be effective when emission abatement is costly, and the exemption on the downstream firm is relatively more effective than that on the upstream firm.