The optimal tax on antebellum US cotton exports

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Irwin, DA
• 署名单位: Dartmouth College; National Bureau of Economic Research; Dartmouth College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/S0022-1996(02)00052-1
• 发表日期: 2003
• 页码: 275-291
• 关键词: optimal export tax; cotton; Export demand

摘要

The US produced about 80% of the world's cotton in the decades prior to the Civil War. How much monopoly power did the US possess in the world cotton market and what would have been the effect of an optimal export tax? This paper estimates the elasticity of foreign demand for US cotton exports and uses the elasticity in a simple partial equilibrium model to calculate the optimal export tax and its effect on prices, trade, and welfare. The results indicate that the export demand elasticity for US cotton was about - 1.7 and that the optimal export tax of about 50% would have raised US welfare by about $10 million, about 0.3% of US GDP or about 1% of the South's GDP. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.