This webinar looks at Mexico's strategy for the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies and the gradual introduction of implicit and explicit carbon taxes during the 2010s. The findings point to a significant effect in reducing gasoline and diesel consumption, both in absolute terms and compared to the counterfactual, reinforcing the idea that gradualist policies can achieve success in making carbon pricing a key instrument in high-middle income countries to achieve fiscal and climate goals. This webinar is based upon the article "From Negative to Positive Carbon Pricing in Mexico by Carlos Muñoz-Piña, Mariza Montes de Oca Leon, and Marisol Rivera-Planter in Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy 11(2)
Speaker: Carlos Muñoz Piña
Carlos Muñoz Piña is currently Director for Research and Data Integrity at the World Resources Institute. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Muñoz Piña has worked for government and academic research centers in Mexico, the UK and California. His focus has been the design and evaluation of economic instruments for forest conservation, water management, sustainable fisheries, and Climate Change mitigation. As a public official, in the Mexican Environment and Resources Ministry and the Mexican Finance Ministry, he has also worked on the negotiation and implementation of such instruments, both at the national and subnational level, and internationally through working groups in the OECD, G20 and NAFTA, among others. Carlos is a graduate from Economics at ITAM-Mexico, with an MSc in Environmental Economics from UCL-UK (British Council Scholar), and a Phd in Resource Economics from UC Berkeley (Fulbright Scholar), and has taught courses in these universities, among other academic collaborations.