Sin taxes and self-control
Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Dokumenter
- Fulltext
Forlagets udgivne version, 1,18 MB, PDF-dokument
According to theory, “sin taxes” are welfare improving if consumers with low self-control respond at least as much to the tax as consumers with high self-control. We investigate empirically if demand response to soft drink and fat tax variations in Denmark depends on consumers’ self-control. We use a unique home-scan panel that includes a survey measure of self-control. When taxes increase, consumers with low self-control reduce purchases less strongly than consumers with high self-control. When taxes decrease, both groups increase their purchases similarly. The results show an asymmetry in price elasticities by self-control that is more pronounced when taxes increase.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Tidsskrift | American Economic Journal: Economic Policy |
| Vol/bind | 15 |
| Udgave nummer | 3 |
| Sider (fra-til) | 1-34 |
| Antal sider | 34 |
| ISSN | 1945-7731 |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 2023 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:
* Schmacker: University of Lausanne, Bâtiment Internef, CH-1015 Lausanne (email: renke.schmacker@unil. ch); Smed: IFRO, University of Copenhagen (email: ss@ifro.ku.dk). Dan Silverman was coeditor for this article. We are grateful to three anonymous referees for thoughtful comments that helped to improve the paper considerably. We thank Pio Baake, Guillaume Frechette, Jana Friedrichsen, Peter Haan, Zarko Kalamov, Tobias König, Dorothea Kübler, Armando Meier, Martin O’Connell, Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, Andy Schotter, Kate Smith, Justin Sydnor, Camille Terrier, Christian Traxler, Jeffrey Wooldridge, and seminar participants at CEBI Copenhagen, DIW Berlin, Essex, FAIR/NHH Bergen, IFS London, Linnaeus, Warwick, and ZEW Mannheim for helpful comments. The paper also benfited from discussion with conference participants at the 2020 ASSA meeting (San Diego), the Risky Health Behaviors Workshop (Hamburg), EEA 2019 (Manchester), IIPF 2019 (Glasgow), Hertie School Applied Micro Workshop, Retreat of CRC TRR 190, Food and Health Economics Workshop (Toulouse), and the Behavioral Welfare Economics Workshop (Berlin). We further thank Adam Lederer for language editing help and Carl-Emil Pless for excellent research assistance. Financial support by the Leibniz Competition through the project GlobalFood (SAW-2015-DIW-4) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through CRC TRR 190 is gratefully acknowledged.
Publisher Copyright:
© (2023), (American Economic Association). All Rights Reserved.
ID: 366504782