Gilbert E. Metcalf is a Professor of Economics at Tufts University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Metcalf has taught at Princeton University, the Kennedy School of Government, and MIT. He has frequently testified before Congress, served on expert panels including a recent National Academies of Sciences panel on energy externalities, and served as a consultant to various organizations. He recently served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Energy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Metcalf's primary research area is applied public finance with particular interests in taxation, energy, and environmental economics. His current research focuses on policy evaluation and design in the area of energy and climate change. He has published papers in numerous academic journals, has edited three books, and has contributed chapters to several books on energy and tax policy. Metcalf received a B.A. in Mathematics from Amherst College, an M.S. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.
Articles
Does the Indexing of Government Transfers Make Carbon Pricing Progressive? (with Don Fullerton and Garth Heutel), American Journal of Agricultural Economics (2012)
We consider the role of transfer indexing in mitigating the regressivity of carbon pricing in...
Linking Policies When Tastes Differ: Global Climate Policy in a Heterogeneous World (with David Weisbach), Review of Environmental Economics and Policy (2012)
We discuss the mechanics of linking different types of climate change policies and identify areas...
Does the Indexing of Government Transfers Make Carbon Pricing Progressive? (with Don Fullerton and Garth Heutel), American Journal of Agricultural Economics (2011)
We analyze both the uses side and the sources side incidence of domestic climate policy...
An analysis of US greenhouse gas cap-and-trade proposals using a forward-looking economic model (with Angelo Costa Gurgel, Sergey Paltsev, and John Reilly), Environment and Development Economics (2011)
We develop a forward-looking version of the recursive dynamic MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis...
Assessing the Federal Deduction for State and Local Tax Payments, National Tax Journal (2011)
This paper examines the distributional and behavioral impacts of ending the deductibility of state and...
Books
U.S. Energy Tax Policy (2010)
An edited volume on energy and climate policy with contributions by leading researchers in tax,...
Contributions to Books
Distributional Impacts in a Comprehensive Climate Policy Package (with Aparna Mathur and Kevin Hassett), Design and Implementation of U.S. Climate Policy (2012)
The Consumer Burden of a Carbon Tax on Gasoline (with Kevin Hassett and Aparna Mathur), Fuel Taxes and the Poor (2012)
Environmental Taxation: What Have We Learned in This Decade?, Tax Policy Lessons From the 2000s (2009)
The Distribution of Tax Burdens: Introduction (with Don Fullerton), The Distribution of Tax Burdens (2003)
This paper summarizes important developments in tax incidence analysis over the past forty years. We...
Popular Press
Unpublished Papers
Analysis of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Tax Proposals (with Sergey Paltsev, John Reilly, Henry Jacoby, Angelo Gurgel, Andrei Sokolov, and Jennifer Holak), MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change Discussion Paper 136 (2008)
Computing Tax Rates for Economic Modeling: A Global Dataset Approach (with Angelo Gurgel, Nicolas Osouf, and John Reilly), MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change Technical Note (2007)
Other
Submission on the Use of Carbon Fees To Achieve Fiscal Sustainability in the Federal Budget (2010)
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform should consider a carbon fee as an...