Tax Incidence When Quality Matters: Evidence from the Beer Market

Rojas Christian and Shi Tianji

Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, 2011, vol. 9, issue 1, 35

Abstract: What are the effects of a per-unit tax on the sales of a good? The answer in standard economics textbooks is a reduction in quantity and an increase in price. However, the homogeneous-product assumption in such treatments is not always correct because the taxed product is frequently sold under numerous differentiated brands. In general, quantity and price adjustments to a per-unit tax increase may vary differentially by brand, which implies that tax incidence requires a more thorough analysis than the standard one. In this paper, we test a popular theoretical prediction that the effects of a per-unit tax on sales may be different for low-quality brands than for high-quality brands. We exploit two exogenous variations on per-unit charges (excise taxes and shipping costs) in the beer industry to study if quality is an important determinant of equilibrium quantity, prices and advertising expenditures. We find that, when faced with higher per-unit charges, the equilibrium price and quantity of a brand are usually positively associated with its quality level; similarly, higher per-unit charges appear to provide firms with an incentive to shift advertising effort towards brands of higher quality. We discuss implications for public policy and firm profitability.

Keywords: excise tax; quality; differentiated products; beer industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1542-0485.1353 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bjafio:v:9:y:2011:i:1:n:10

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jafio/html

DOI: 10.2202/1542-0485.1353

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization is currently edited by Azzeddine Azzam

More articles in Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().