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 currently is on leave serving 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
Distributional Implications of Alternative U.S. Greenhouse Gas Control Measures (with Sebastian Rausch, John M. Reilly, and Sergey Paltsev), The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy (2010)
We analyze the distributional and efficiency impacts of different allowance allocation schemes motivated by recently...
Tax Policies for Low-Carbon Technologies, National Tax Journal (2009)
The following paper discusses the difficulties of achieving climate change policy goals with low-carbon subsidies...
Market-based Policy Options to Control U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Journal of Economic Perspectives (2009)
The United States is moving closer to enacting a policy to reduce domestic emissions of...
Cost Containment in Climate Change Policy: Alternative Approaches to Mitigating Price Volatility, University of Virginia Tax Law Review (2009)
Cap and trade systems are emerging as the front-running policy choice to address climate change...
Investment in Energy Infrastructure and the Tax Code, Tax Policy and the Economy (2009)
Federal tax policy provides a broad array of incentives for energy investment. I review those...
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
Environmental Taxation: What Have We Learned in This Decade?, Tax Policy Lessons From the 2000s (2009)
Tax Incidence (with Don Fullerton), Handbook of Public Economics (2002)
This chapter reviews the concepts, methods, and results of studies that analyze the incidence of...
A Tax on Output of the Polluting Industry is not a Tax on Pollution: The Importance of Hitting the Target, Behavioral and Distributional Effects of Environmental Policy (2001)
Popular Press
Unpublished Papers
Reacting to Greenhouse Gas Emissions: A Carbon Tax to Meet Emission Targets (2009)
In previous papers I have described a revenue and distributionally neutral approach to reducing U.S....
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...