IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/itaxpf/v4y1997i3p361-377.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

National Price Levels: Do Taxes Matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Ephraim Kleiman

Abstract

Utilizing a sample of 51 countries for which price leveldata for 1980 were available from stage IV of the ICP project,the paper examines the possible role of taxes in explaining thedeparture of national price levels from purchasing power parities.The results obtained in the paper suggest that the overall burdenof central government taxation, especially of indirect domestictaxes, raises the general price level. No such price effectsseem to be associated with the direct tax burden, supportingthe conventional view of their not being shifted forward. Theperhaps unexpected result, that import duties have no discernibleeffects on the price level, is consistent with earlier findings.Another unexpected result is that the burden of domestic indirecttaxation expresses itself in the prices of tradables, ratherthan of non-tradables. Furthermore, no evidence was found tosupport the view, that tax inflated prices are offset by reducedprices in the untaxed sector, as required for the price levelto be neutral with respect to taxation. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1997

Suggested Citation

  • Ephraim Kleiman, 1997. "National Price Levels: Do Taxes Matter?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 4(3), pages 361-377, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:4:y:1997:i:3:p:361-377
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1008672506502
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1008672506502
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1023/A:1008672506502?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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arvind Panagariya, 1988. "A Theoretical Explanation of Some Stylized Facts of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(3), pages 509-526.
    2. Falvey, Rodney E & Gemmell, Norman, 1991. "Explaining Service-Price Differences in International Comparisons," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1295-1309, December.
    3. Kravis, Irving B & Lipsey, Robert E, 1988. "National Price Levels and the Prices of Tradables and Nontradables," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 474-478, May.
    4. Kenneth Rogoff, 1996. "The Purchasing Power Parity Puzzle," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 647-668, June.
    5. Bela Balassa, 1964. "The Purchasing-Power Parity Doctrine: A Reappraisal," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72(6), pages 584-584.
    6. Mr. Ephraim Kleiman, 1993. "Taxes and the Price Level: A Further Examination of the PPP Hypothesis," IMF Working Papers 1993/005, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Christopher Clague, 1993. "Why are Prices so Low in America?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(5), pages 601-610, September.
    8. Clague, Christopher, 1986. "Determinants of the National Price Level: Some Empirical Results," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 68(2), pages 320-323, May.
    9. repec:bla:revinw:v:42:y:1996:i:2:p:181-94 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Vaillancourt, Francois, 1987. "The Compliance Costs of Taxes on Businesses and Individuals: A Review of the Evidence," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 42(3), pages 395-414.
    11. Irving B. Kravis & Robert E. Lipsey, 1982. "Towards an Explanation of National Price Levels," NBER Working Papers 1034, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Kravis, Irving B & Heston, Alan W & Summers, Robert, 1978. "Real GDP per Capita for More Than One Hundred Countries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 88(350), pages 215-242, June.
    13. Bergstrand, Jeffrey H, 1991. "Structural Determinants of Real Exchange Rates and National Price Levels: Some Empirical Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 325-334, 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. Ephraim Kleiman, 1997. "National Price Levels: Do Taxes Matter?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 4(3), pages 361-377, July.
    2. Mohsen Bahmani‐Oskooee & ABM Nasir, 2005. "Productivity Bias Hypothesis and The Purchasing Power Parity: a review article," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(4), pages 671-696, September.
    3. Eiji Fujii, 2015. "Reconsidering The Price–Income Relationship Across Countries," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(5), pages 733-760, December.
    4. George Alessandria & Joseph P. Kaboski, 2004. "Violating purchasing power parity," Working Papers 04-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    5. Broda, Christian, 2006. "Exchange rate regimes and national price levels," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 52-81, September.
    6. Robert E. Lipsey & Birgitta Swedenborg, 1999. "Wage Dispersion and Country Price Levels," NBER Chapters, in: International and Interarea Comparisons of Income, Output, and Prices, pages 453-477, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. 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.
    8. Stahler Kevin & Subramanian Arvind, 2014. "Versailles Redux? Eurozone Competitiveness in a Dynamic Balassa-Samuelson-Penn Framework," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 129-176, December.
    9. Agnès Bénassy-Quéré & Dramane Coulibaly, 2014. "The impact of market regulations on intra-European real exchange rates," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 150(3), pages 529-556, August.
    10. Ricardo Faria, Joao & Leon-Ledesma, Miguel, 2003. "Testing the Balassa-Samuelson effect: Implications for growth and the PPP," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 241-253, June.
    11. Bahmani-Oskooee, Mohsen & Gelan, Abera, 2006. "Black market exchange rate and the productivity bias hypothesis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 243-249, May.
    12. Jaewoo Lee, 2007. "Transfer Effect in National Price Levels," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 143(3), pages 534-556, October.
    13. Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee & Gour G. Goswami, 2003. "Smuggling As Another Cause Of Failure Of The Ppp," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 28(2), pages 23-38, December.
    14. Carmen Mar? Mart?ez, 2003. "Current Account Imbalances, Thriftiness And The Real Exchange Rate In A Growing Economy," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 589.03, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    15. Prados de la Escosura, Leandro, 2000. "International Comparisons of Real Product, 1820-1990: An Alternative Data Set," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 1-41, January.
    16. Klasing, Mariko J. & Milionis, Petros, 2014. "Quantifying the evolution of world trade, 1870–1949," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 185-197.
    17. Dobrinsky, Rumen, 2006. "Catch-up inflation and nominal convergence: The balancing act for new EU entrants," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 424-442, December.
    18. Danijel Nestić, 2005. "Price Level Convergence: Croatia, Transition Countries and the EU," Working Papers 13, The Croatian National Bank, Croatia.
    19. Karam Shaar & Mohamed Ariff, 2016. "Re-examination of price level differentials using economic freedom index," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(6), pages 880-896, September.
    20. Mr. Juan Zalduendo, 2008. "Bivariate Assessments of Real Exchange Rates Using PPP Data," IMF Working Papers 2008/153, International Monetary Fund.

    More about this item

    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:itaxpf:v:4:y:1997:i:3:p:361-377. 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: 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.