IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v4y2012i4p169-98.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Heterogeneous Geographic and Socioeconomic Incidence of Cigarette Taxes: Evidence from Nielsen Homescan Data

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew Harding
  • Ephraim Leibtag
  • Michael F. Lovenheim

Abstract

We use Nielsen Homescan data to examine who bears the economic burden of cigarette taxes. We find cigarette taxes are less than fully passed through to consumer prices, suggesting consumers and producers split the excess burden of these taxes. Using information on consumer location, we show the availability of lower-tax goods across state borders creates significant differences in the pass-through rate. Tax avoidance opportunities also have a sizable effect on purchasing behavior by altering consumer search, prices paid and quantities purchased. Finally, we demonstrate that the incidence of cigarette taxes and the border effect varies by household income and education. (JEL D12, H22, H25, H26, H71, L66)

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew Harding & Ephraim Leibtag & Michael F. Lovenheim, 2012. "The Heterogeneous Geographic and Socioeconomic Incidence of Cigarette Taxes: Evidence from Nielsen Homescan Data," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 169-198, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:4:y:2012:i:4:p:169-98
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pol.4.4.169
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/pol.4.4.169
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/pol/data/2010-0253_data.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Besley, Timothy J. & Rosen, Harvey S., 1999. "Sales Taxes and Prices: An Empirical Analysis," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 52(2), pages 157-178, June.
    2. Burda, Martin & Harding, Matthew & Hausman, Jerry, 2008. "A Bayesian mixed logit-probit model for multinomial choice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 232-246, December.
    3. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2007. "Life-Cycle Prices and Production," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1533-1559, December.
    4. Baughman, Reagan & Conlin, Michael & Dickert-Conlin, Stacy & Pepper, John, 2001. "Slippery when wet: the effects of local alcohol access laws on highway safety," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 1089-1096, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pierre Dubois & Rachel Griffith & Martin O'Connell, 2020. "How Well Targeted Are Soda Taxes?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(11), pages 3661-3704, November.
    2. Harding, Matthew & Lovenheim, Michael, 2017. "The effect of prices on nutrition: Comparing the impact of product- and nutrient-specific taxes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 53-71.
    3. Burda, Martin & Harding, Matthew & Hausman, Jerry, 2012. "A Poisson mixture model of discrete choice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 166(2), pages 184-203.
    4. Martin O'Connell & Pierre Dubois & Rachel Griffith, 2022. "The Use of Scanner Data for Economics Research," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 723-745, August.
    5. E. Weyl & Michal Fabinger, 2015. "A Tractable Approach to Pass-Through Patterns," 2015 Meeting Papers 747, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Douglas J. Young & Agnieszka Bielinska‐Kwapisz, 2006. "Alcohol Prices, Consumption, and Traffic Fatalities," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(3), pages 690-703, January.
    7. François Gardes, 2021. "On the value of time and human life," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 21023, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    8. Liran Einav & Ephraim Leibtag & Aviv Nevo, 2010. "Recording discrepancies in Nielsen Homescan data: Are they present and do they matter?," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 207-239, June.
    9. Nicolas Moreau & Elena Stancanelli, 2015. "Household Consumption at Retirement : A Regression Discontinuity Study on French Data," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 117-118, pages 253-276.
    10. Steven F. Kreft & Nancy M. Epling, 2007. "Do border crossings contribute to underage motor‐vehicle fatalities? An analysis of Michigan border crossings," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(3), pages 765-781, August.
    11. Liran Einav & Dan Knoepfle & Jonathan Levin & Neel Sundaresan, 2014. "Sales Taxes and Internet Commerce," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(1), pages 1-26, January.
    12. Anderson, Simon P. & de Palma, Andre & Kreider, Brent, 2001. "Tax incidence in differentiated product oligopoly," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 173-192, August.
    13. Clément Carbonnier, 2005. "Is Tax Shifting Asymmetric? Evidence from French VAT reforms, 1995-2000," Working Papers halshs-00590719, HAL.
    14. Cheng-Yih Hong & Yi-Chi Tsai & Tsai- Rong Lee & Hui-Wen Dang, 2018. "Tax Rate Adjustment and Its Potential Impact on Price: An Application Mathematical Input-Output Price Spillover Model," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 8(5), pages 21-25.
    15. Haan, Peter & Simmler, Martin, 2018. "Wind electricity subsidies — A windfall for landowners? Evidence from a feed-in tariff in Germany," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 16-32.
    16. Snir, Avichai & Levy, Daniel, 2021. "If You Think 9-Ending Prices Are Low, Think Again," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 6(1 (Forthc).
    17. Kazuki Onji, 2009. "A tale of pork prices : evasion and attenuation of a Japanese tariff," Trade Working Papers 22883, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    18. Jin, Xin & Maheu, John M., 2016. "Bayesian semiparametric modeling of realized covariance matrices," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 192(1), pages 19-39.
    19. Aguiar, M. & Hurst, E., 2016. "The Macroeconomics of Time Allocation," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 203-253, Elsevier.
    20. George Alessandria & Joseph P. Kaboski, 2011. "Pricing-to-Market and the Failure of Absolute PPP," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 91-127, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • H22 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Incidence
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • L66 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Food; Beverages; Cosmetics; Tobacco

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. The Heterogeneous Geographic and Socioeconomic Incidence of Cigarette Taxes- Evidence from Nielsen Homescan Data (American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2012) in ReplicationWiki

    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:aea:aejpol:v:4:y:2012:i:4:p:169-98. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    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.