 What’s in a name? The incidence of gasoline excise taxes versus gasoline carbon leviesBehzod B. Ahundjanov and Michael D. Noel International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2021, vol. 76, issue C Abstract: Legislators often attach specific names to individual taxes to help explain their purpose, increase transparency, and ease public backlash over tax increases. It may be politically beneficial, but does the simple act of naming a tax and attaching it to a specific set of benefits have an actual effect in the marketplace? Do consumers respond differently to tax-induced price increases depending on what that tax is? In this article, a natural experiment is used to evaluate tax incidence after the introduction of two gasoline taxes in Alberta - 1) an increase in the generic excise tax and 2) an environmentally-targeted “carbon levy”. While similar on the cost side, the taxes were very different in name and transparency on the benefit side. Results show that benefit-side transparency can matter – responses were lower and incidence higher for the more transparent carbon levy than with the less transparent excise tax. Keywords: Retail gasoline; Tax incidence; Tax burden; Elasticities; Cost passthrough (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:indorg:v:76:y:2021:i:c:s0167718721000266 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijindorg.2021.102733 Access Statistics for this article International Journal of Industrial Organization is currently edited by P. Bajari, B. Caillaud and N. Gandal More articles in International Journal of Industrial Organization from Elsevier |
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