IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v165y2015i3p171-191.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A tragedy of the anticommons: local option taxation and cell phone tax bills

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew Mitchell
  • Thomas Stratmann

Abstract

When multiple taxing jurisdictions overlap and fail to account for one another’s actions, they over-tax the common base. This is a prediction of the anticommons model, in which numerous parties have authority to exclude others from using a resource. This model further predicts that when governments over-tax the base, private parties will underutilize the resource, and underutilization will be greater as the number of parties with exclusion rights rises. We test these predictions by studying cell phone taxation and local option tax authority, which allows some cities, counties, and special-purpose districts to levy taxes on cell phone use. Consistent with theory, we find that the tax rate on cell phone service is higher when local governments have the option to tax. Further, the percentage of households owning cell phones is lower when there is the local option to tax, and ownership rates fall with the number of taxes levied. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew Mitchell & Thomas Stratmann, 2015. "A tragedy of the anticommons: local option taxation and cell phone tax bills," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 165(3), pages 171-191, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:165:y:2015:i:3:p:171-191
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-015-0302-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-015-0302-7
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-015-0302-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Adam A. Millsap & Bradley K. Hobbs & Dean Stansel, 2019. "Local Governments and Economic Freedom: A Test of the Leviathan Hypothesis," Public Finance Review, , vol. 47(3), pages 493-529, May.
    2. Azaguagh, Ismail & Driouchi, Ahmed, 2018. "Understanding Commons and Anticommons in different economic contexts," MPRA Paper 116621, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Millsap, Adam & Hobbs, Brad & Stansel, Dean, 2017. "Local Governments and Economic Freedom: A Test of the Leviathan Hypothesis," Working Papers 07334, George Mason University, Mercatus Center.
    4. Vlad Tarko & Andrew Farrant, 2019. "The efficiency of regulatory arbitrage," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 141-166, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Anticommons; Overlapping jurisdictions; State taxation; Vertical externalities; Fiscal federalism; H1; H3; H7;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents
    • H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:165:y:2015:i:3:p:171-191. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.