Revisiting the Conflicts between ‘Environmental Taxes vs Standard’ in the Context of International Trade: The Role of Waste Recycling

The present paper throws light on the famous “tax versus standard” debate in the sphere of environmental economics by using general equilibrium framework and tries to examine which of the two, i.e., tax or standard is the better way to deal with pollution. The present paper has done so in the presence of a waste recycling sector which is the unique feature of it and has shown the impact of tax and standard separately on different polluting and non-polluting sectors of the economy. The paper has developed a unique as well as an interesting result that in the presence of a waste recycling sector in the economy, both pollution tax and environmental standard have the same impact.