scholarly journals Commodity Taxation under Habit Formation and Myopia

Author(s):  
Helmuth Cremer ◽  
Philippe De Donder ◽  
Dario Maldonado ◽  
Pierre Pestieau

Abstract This paper analyzes the pattern of consumption taxes in a two period model with habit formation and myopia. An individual’s second-period needs increase with first period consumption. However, myopic individuals do not see this habit formation relation when they take their saving decision. The first-best solution is decentralized by a simple “Pigouvian” (paternalistic) consumption tax (along with suitable lump-sum taxes). In a second-best setting, when personalized lump-sum transfers are not available, consumption taxes may have conflicting paternalistic and redistributive effects. Taxes should discourage consumption of goods that entail negative externalities (unforeseen habits), but instead they discourage less the consumption of goods that are proportionately consumed by individuals with high net social marginal utility of income. Both myopic and farsighted individuals may benefit more from the second-best policy as the proportion of myopic agents in society increases.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Li

AbstractThis paper introduces durables into a dynamic general equilibrium overlapping generation model with idiosyncratic income shocks and endogenous borrowing constraints, which depend on durables. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the welfare effects of consumption tax reforms in a richer model that captures the difference between nondurable and durable consumption. When durables are considered, the standard results that a shift to consumption taxes is welfare improving are overturned. The mechanism of this opposing result is that consumption tax makes durable consumption more expensive without relaxing the borrowing constraint. The inability of borrowing to insure against income risk deviates the economy further away from market completeness and particularly hurts young and poor households. As a result, welfare decreases, coupled with negative redistribution.


Author(s):  
A. M. Russell ◽  
C. A. Martini ◽  
J. A. Rickard

AbstractThis paper examines the role of import tariffs and consumption taxes when a product is supplied to a domestic market by a foreign monopoly via a subsidiary. It is assumed that there is no competition in the domestic market from internal suppliers. The home country is able to levy a profits tax on the subsidiary. The objective of our analysis is to determine the mix of tariff and consumption tax which simultaneously maximizes national welfare. We show that national welfare does not have an internal maximum, but attains its maximum on a boundary of the consumption tax–tariff parameter space. Furthermore, the optimal value of national welfare increases as the tariff decreases and the consumption tax increases. The results obtained generalize the results of an earlier paper in which national welfare was maximized with respect to either a tariff or consumption tax, but not both.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 211-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Knittel ◽  
Ryan Sandler

When consumers or firms don’t face the true social cost of their actions, market outcomes are inefficient. In the case of negative externalities, Pigouvian taxes are one way to correct this market failure, but it may be infeasible to tax the externality directly. The alternative, taxing a related product, will be second-best. In this paper, we show that in the presence of heterogeneous externalities and elasticities, this type of indirect tax performs poorly. In our empirical application, gasoline taxes to address pollution externalities, less than a third of the deadweight loss of the externality is addressed by second-best optimal taxes. (JEL D62, H21, H23, H71, H76, Q53, R48)


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry C. Edeh

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of poverty and inequality reduction through redistribution have indeed become critical concerns in many low- and middle-income countries, including Nigeria. Although redistribution results from the effect of tax revenue collections, micro household-level empirical analyses of the distributional effect of personal income tax (PIT) and value added tax (VAT) reforms in Nigeria have been scarcely carried out. This study for the first time quantitatively assessed both the equity and redistributive effects of PIT and VAT across different reform scenarios in Nigeria. Data used in this study was mainly drawn from the most recent large scale nationally representative Nigeria Living Standard Survey, conducted in 2018/2019. The Kakwani Index was used to calculate and compare the progressivity of PIT and VAT reforms. A simple static micro-simulation model was employed in assessing the redistributive effect of PIT and VAT reforms in the country. After informality has been accounted for, the PIT was found to be progressive in the pre- 2011 tax scheme, but turned regressive in the post-2011 tax scheme. It was also discovered that the newly introduced lump sum relief allowance in the post-2011 PIT scheme accrues more to the high-income than to the low-income taxpayers – confirming the regressivity of the current PIT scheme. However, the study further shows (through counterfactual simulations) that excluding the relatively high-income taxpayers from sharing in the variable part of the lump sum relief allowance makes PIT progressive in the post-2011 scheme. The VAT was uncovered to be regressive both in the pre-2020 scheme, and in the current VAT reform scheme. Further, after putting informality into consideration, the PIT was found to marginally reduce inequality but increase poverty in the pre-2011 scheme. The post-2011 PIT scheme reduced inequality and increased poverty, but by a smaller proportion – confirming a limited redistribution mainly resulting from the concentration of the lump sum relief allowance at the top of the distribution. However, if the variable part of the lump sum relief allowance is provided for ‘only’ the low-income taxpayers below a predefined income threshold, the post-2011 PIT scheme becomes largely redistributive. VAT was uncovered to marginally increase inequality and poverty in the pre-2020 scheme. Though the current VAT scheme slightly increased inequality, it considerably increased poverty in the country. It is therefore suggested that a better tax reform, with well-regulated relief allowance and differentiated VAT rates, will help to enhance the equity and redistribution capacity of the Nigeria tax system.


Author(s):  
Jose Miguel Abito ◽  
David Besanko ◽  
Daniel Diermeier

This chapter introduces a finite-horizon (three-period) model of corporate campaigns in which an activist targets a single firm. The activist cares solely about the social benefits generated by the private regulation the firm is capable of undertaking. A firm can undertake costly effort in each period to improve its reputation in the subsequent period. The activist could undertake costly effort to impair the firm's reputation. As compared to a setting in which the firm faced no activist, the firm chooses a higher level of private regulation in the first period and, in expectation, a higher level of private regulation in the second period as well. The authors interpret this increase as self-insurance against reputational harm. The activist has a strategic effect on the firm in the second period: if the campaign impairs the firm's reputation, the firm will undertake more private regulation than it would have had its reputation remained the same or even improved.


2022 ◽  
pp. 197-213
Author(s):  
Yeoul Hwangbo

The challenge over most countries has been legislating related acts and regulations on global electronic commerce taxation, but they have not implemented the consumption tax system for global electronic commerce so far. Consumer payment tax (CPT) is based on fintech and thereby proposed so that consumers can pay the consumption taxes to related taxation office of the countries in accordance with consumer country's jurisdiction principle, considering the CPT is assessed to satisfy most of the electronic commerce taxation criteria and has the potential to be applied to electronic commerce.


Author(s):  
Gea M Lee

The paper studies monopoly pricing of a vertically differentiated durable good in a two-period model. It provides an explanation for seemingly unusual practice of a firm selling a "degraded good," arguing that the presence of Coasian dynamics may lead to the sale of the degraded good that is not less costly to produce than a high-quality good. The main finding is that when the firm can identify previous customers only if they voluntarily reveal their past purchases, it sells the degraded good along with the high-quality good in the first period. When the firm sells an upgrade of the degraded good, the price of the high-quality good cannot be "too low" in the second period, since otherwise the upgrading customers would pretend to be new customers. Thus the firm can enhance first-period sales while mitigating consumers' incentive to wait until the next period.


2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Schäfer ◽  
Simone Valente

We study the general equilibrium properties of two growth models with overlapping generations, habit formation, and endogenous fertility. In the neoclassical model, habits modify the economy's growth rate and generate transitional dynamics in fertility; stationary income per capita is associated with either increasing or decreasing population and output, depending on the strength of habits. In the AK specification, growing population and increasing consumption per capita require that the habit coefficient lie within definite boundaries; outside the critical interval, positive growth is associated with either declining consumption due to overcrowding, or extinction paths with declining population. In both frameworks, habits reduce fertility: the trade-off between second-period consumption and spending for bequests prompts agents to decrease fertility in order to make parental altruism less costly. This mechanism suggests that status-dependent preferences may explain part of the decline in fertility rates observed in most developed economies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 798-836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Biljanovska

This paper examines optimal policy in a macroeconomic model with collateral constraints. Binding collateral constraints yield inefficient competitive equilibrium allocations because they distort the optimal utilization of real resources. I identify the set of policy instruments that can be used by a Ramsey planner to achieve the first-best and the second-best (i.e., constrained planner's) allocations. A system of distortionary taxes on capital and labor income, along with direct lump-sum transfers among borrowers and lenders replicates the first-best outcome. The tax rates correct for the marginal distortions, whereas the direct lump-sum transfers perform income redistributions among the agents. In absence of direct lump-sum transfers, the distortionary taxes have an additional role, i.e., to perform implicit income transfers, and only second-best outcomes are attainable. I also derive the optimal policy in response to real and financial shocks, and show how the policy recommendations differ depending on the set of policy instruments available.


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-184
Author(s):  
Edward J. McCaffery

The traditional view of tax holds that consumption taxes fail tax the yield to capital, whereas income taxes do, leading to John Stuart Mill's criticism of the income tax as a "double tax" on wealth that is saved. A better analytic understanding illustrates that there are two types of consumption taxes. A prepaid consumption or (equivalently) wage tax indeed ignores the yield to capital. But a consistent progressive postpaid consumption tax gets at such yield, at the individual level, when but only when the returns to capital are used to elevate lifestyles in material terms. Such a tax allows "ordinary" savings that move around labor earnings, in constant dollar terms, to different periods of an individual's life, such as times of retirement or heightened medical or educational needs. Because a progressive postpaid consumption tax falls on the yield to capital at the right time-when its use at the individual level becomes manifest-all other taxes on capital, such as capital gains, gift and estate, and corporate income taxes, can and should be repealed, in the name of fairness.


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