| 来源类型 | Working Paper |
| 规范类型 | 报告 |
| DOI | 10.3386/w25841 |
| 来源ID | Working Paper 25841 |
| Regressive Sin Taxes, With an Application to the Optimal Soda Tax | |
| Hunt Allcott; Benjamin Lockwood; Dmitry Taubinsky | |
| 发表日期 | 2019-05-20 |
| 出版年 | 2019 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | A common objection to “sin taxes”—corrective taxes on goods that are thought to be overconsumed, such as cigarettes, alcohol, and sugary drinks—is that they often fall disproportionately on low-income consumers. This paper studies the interaction between corrective and redistributive motives in a general optimal taxation framework and delivers empirically implementable sufficient statistics formulas for the optimal commodity tax. The optimal sin tax is increasing in the price elasticity of demand, increasing in the degree to which lower-income consumers are more biased or more elastic to the tax, decreasing in the extent to which consumption is concentrated among the poor, and decreasing in income effects, because income effects imply that commodity taxes create labor supply distortions. Contrary to common intuitions, stronger preferences for redistribution can increase the optimal sin tax, if lower-income consumers are more responsive to taxes or are more biased. As an application, we estimate the optimal nationwide tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in our model, using Nielsen Homescan data and a specially designed survey measuring nutrition knowledge and self-control. Holding federal income tax rates constant, we find an optimal federal sugar-sweetened beverage tax of 1 to 2.1 cents per ounce in our model, although optimal city-level taxes could be as much as 60% lower due to cross-border shopping. |
| 主题 | Microeconomics ; Behavioral Economics ; Public Economics ; Health, Education, and Welfare ; Health |
| URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w25841 |
| 来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
| 引用统计 | |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/583514 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Hunt Allcott,Benjamin Lockwood,Dmitry Taubinsky. Regressive Sin Taxes, With an Application to the Optimal Soda Tax. 2019. |
| 条目包含的文件 | ||||||
| 文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
| w25841.pdf（1098KB） | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 | ||
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