Commodity Tax Harmonization with Public Goods - An Alternative Perspective

Ben Lockwood

No 1304, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper investigates whether it is possible to find Pareto-improving commodity tax reforms that harmonize taxes between two countries when governments supply public goods and thus have revenue requirements. To focus on the basic issues, we consider a Ricardian model of trade with elastic factor supply and two traded goods, and suppose that initial taxes are Nash equilibrium ones. This allows a complete characterization of the conditions under which Pareto-improving reforms exist using simple geometric arguments. These conditions are completely determined by: (i) the configuration of initial taxes across countries; and (ii) whether the two goods are substitutes or complements. An example suggests that harmonization is unlikely to be Pareto-improving if the revenue requirement is high, and the demand for imports relatively price elastic, in both countries. An alternative definition of harmonization, difference harmonization, which may yield Pareto-improvements under more general conditions, is proposed.

Keywords: Commodity Tax Reform; Tax Harmonization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H21 H41 H87 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=1304 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Commodity Tax Hamonisation with Public Goods - An Alternative Perspective (1995)
Working Paper: Commodity Tax Harmonisation with Public Goods - an Alternative Perspective
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:cpr:ceprdp:1304

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... ers/dp.php?dpno=1304

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().