Demand and distance: Evidence on cross-border shopping

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Asplund, Marcus; Friberg, Richard; Wilander, Fredrik
• 署名单位: Stockholm School of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Royal Institute of Technology
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2006.05.006
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 141-157
• 关键词: law of one price; Tax competition; Tax harmonization; cross-border shopping; European integration

摘要

An important issue for commodity taxation is the extent to which changes in foreign taxes affect the extent of cross-border shopping and thereby, domestic tax revenue. We use data from Swedish municipalities to estimate how responsive alcohol sales are to foreign prices, and relate the sensitivity to the location's distance to the border. Typical results suggest that the elasticity with respect to the foreign price is around 0.3 in the border region; moving 150 (400) km inland reduces the cross-price elasticity to 0.2 (0.1). Our estimates suggest that a recent Danish cut in the spirits tax reduced Swedish tax revenues from spirits sales by more than 2%, and that an attempt by Sweden to cut taxes in response would reduce tax revenues further. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.