Asymmetric commodity tax competition - comment on de Crombrugghe and Tulkens

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Haufler, A
• 署名单位: University of Konstanz
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/S0047-2727(97)00050-9
• 发表日期: 1998
• 页码: 135-144
• 关键词: commodity tax competition; Fiscal externalities

摘要

A widely noticed result by de Crombrugghe and Tulkens (Journal of Public Economics 41 (1990) 335-350) states that asymmetric commodity tax competition always leads to tax rates being too low in both countries, even though there are counteracting private and public consumption effects for the high-tax region. This note argues that the result depends crucially on the assumption that welfare in the high-tax region is concave in the tax rate of the low-tax country and shows that this assumption cannot generally be met in the underlying Mintz and Tulkens (Journal of Public Economics 29 (1986) 133-172) model. It is also shown that a tax increase in the low-tax country will hurt the high-tax region when the marginal transaction cost schedule is sufficiently elastic with respect to the level of cross-border shopping. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A.