IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-11-00680.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tax Luxury or Necessity

Author

Listed:
  • Chia-Hui Lu

    (Department of Economics, National Taipei University)

Abstract

This paper studies the optimal taxation between luxury and necessity goods. We set up a three-production-sector neoclassical growth model with inelastic labor supply, and analyze the tax incidence. We find that the two consumption taxes are neutral to economic growth and that the welfare maximization optimal tax mix involves levying the same rate on those two goods. In reality, the tax rate levied on the luxury good is usually higher, so that the government should reduce the tax rate on the luxury good and raise that on the necessity good to the same level in order to enhance the household's lifetime welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Chia-Hui Lu, 2012. "Tax Luxury or Necessity," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(1), pages 952-959.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-11-00680
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2012/Volume32/EB-12-V32-I1-P90.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Finn E. Kydland & Edward C. Prescott, 1991. "Hours and Employment Variation in Business-Cycle Theory," International Economic Association Series, in: Niels Thygesen & Kumaraswamy Velupillai & Stefano Zambelli (ed.), Business Cycles, chapter 5, pages 107-134, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Chamley, Christophe, 1986. "Optimal Taxation of Capital Income in General Equilibrium with Infinite Lives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(3), pages 607-622, May.
    3. Bagwell, Laurie Simon & Bernheim, B Douglas, 1996. "Veblen Effects in a Theory of Conspicuous Consumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 349-373, June.
    4. Ng, Yew-Kwang, 1987. "Diamonds Are a Government's Best Friend: Burden-Free Taxes on Goods Valued for Their Values," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(1), pages 186-191, March.
    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. Chen, Been-Lon & Lu, Chia-Hui, 2013. "Optimal factor tax incidence in two-sector human capital-based models," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 75-94.
    2. Michele Piccione & Ariel Rubinstein, 2008. "Luxury Prices: An Expository Note," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 59(1), pages 127-132, March.
    3. Bilancini, Ennio & Boncinelli, Leonardo, 2019. "Wage inequality, labor income taxes, and the notion of social status," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 13, pages 1-35.
    4. Vitaly Pruzhansky, 2014. "Luxury goods, vertical restraints and internet sales," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 227-246, October.
    5. Chia-Hui Lu & Been-Lon Chen, 2015. "Optimal Capital Taxation in a Neoclassical Growth Model," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(2), pages 257-269, April.
    6. Per Engström, 2011. "Bling bling taxation and the fiscal virtues of hip hop," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(1), pages 139-147, June.
    7. Komlos, John & Salamon, Peter, 2008. "The poverty of growth with interdependent utility functions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 2242-2247, December.
    8. McClure, James & Kumcu, Erdogan, 2008. "Promotions and product pricing: Parsimony versus Veblenesque demand," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 105-117, January.
    9. Chen, Ping-ho & Chu, Angus C. & Chu, Hsun & Lai, Ching-chong, 2017. "Short-run and long-run effects of capital taxation on innovation and economic growth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 207-221.
    10. Haimanti Bhattacharya & Subhasish Dugar, 2014. "Partnership Formation: The Role of Social Status," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(5), pages 1130-1147, May.
    11. Rege, Mari, 2008. "Why do people care about social status?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 233-242, May.
    12. Tomer Blumkin & Spencer Bastani & Luca Micheletto, 2024. "Rethinking Commodity Taxation: The New StatusRedistribution Channel," Working Papers 2412, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    13. Richard Ball & Kateryna Chernova, 2008. "Absolute Income, Relative Income, and Happiness," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 88(3), pages 497-529, September.
    14. Bilancini, Ennio & Boncinelli, Leonardo, 2012. "Redistribution and the notion of social status," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 651-657.
    15. Perez Truglia, Ricardo Nicolas, 2007. "Conspicuous consumption in the land of Prince Charming," MPRA Paper 22009, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 22 Mar 2010.
    16. Bronsert, Anne-Kathrin & Glazer, Amihai & Konrad, Kai A., 2014. "Old Money, the Nouveau Riche and Brunhilde's Marriage Dilemma," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100385, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    17. Ellen R. M cG rattan & Lee E. Ohanian, 2010. "Does Neoclassical Theory Account For The Effects Of Big Fiscal Shocks? Evidence From World War Ii," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 51(2), pages 509-532, May.
    18. Tran, Anh & Zeckhauser, Richard, 2012. "Rank as an inherent incentive: Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 645-650.
    19. Wei-Bin Zhang, 2017. "Business Cycles with Spirit of Capitalism and Conspicuous Consumption in a Multi-Country Growth Model," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 10(8), pages 58-71, August.
    20. Anne-Kathrin Bronsert & Amihai Glazer & Kai A. Konrad, 2017. "Old money, the nouveaux riches and Brunhilde’s marriage strategy," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(1), pages 163-186, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    consumption tax; tax incidence; optimal taxation.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-11-00680. 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.