IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9415.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Oligopoly Deregulation and the Taxation of Commodities

Author

Listed:
  • Gilbert E. Metcalf
  • George Norman

Abstract

We examine the interplay between market structure and the form that commodity taxation should take in a world in which firms produce differentiated products and so are able to exert some degree of market power. Our analysis takes explicit account of two important recent developments that carry significant implications for market structure and so for the appropriate design and effectiveness of commodity taxation: market deregulation and technological change. In the presence of price discrimination, we find that tax policy loses much of its effectiveness at serving as a substitute for direct regulation. Moreover, in cases where taxes can influence market structure, subsides rather than taxes may be required to achieve optimum market structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Gilbert E. Metcalf & George Norman, 2003. "Oligopoly Deregulation and the Taxation of Commodities," NBER Working Papers 9415, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9415
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9415.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kats, Amoz, 1995. "More on Hotelling's stability in competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 89-93, March.
    2. Kay, J. A. & Keen, M. J., 1983. "How should commodities be taxed? : Market structure, product heterogeneity and the optimal structure of commodity taxes," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 339-358, September.
    3. Eaton, B Curtis & Schmitt, Nicolas, 1994. "Flexible Manufacturing and Market Structure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 875-888, September.
    4. B. Curtis Eaton & Myrna Holtz Wooders, 1985. "Sophisticated Entry in a Model of Spatial Competition," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(2), pages 282-297, Summer.
    5. Steven C. Salop, 1979. "Monopolistic Competition with Outside Goods," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 141-156, Spring.
    6. George Norman & Jacques‐François Thisse, 1999. "Technology Choice and Market Structure: strategic aspects of flexible manufacturing," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 345-372, September.
    7. Norman, George & Thisse, Jacques-Francois, 1996. "Product Variety and Welfare under Tough and Soft Pricing Regimes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(434), pages 76-91, January.
    8. Novshek, William, 1980. "Equilibrium in simple spatial (or differentiated product) models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 313-326, April.
    9. repec:bla:jindec:v:47:y:1999:i:3:p:345-72 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Gilbert E. Metcalf & George Norman, 2002. "Oligopoly Deregulation in General Equilibrium: A Tax Neutralization Result," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0210, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    2. Fullerton, Don & Metcalf, Gilbert E., 2002. "Tax incidence," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 26, pages 1787-1872, Elsevier.
    3. Darlene C. Chisholm & George Norman, 2002. "Spatial Competition and Demand: An Application to Motion Pictures," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0216, Department of Economics, Tufts University.

    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. Gilbert E. Metcalf & George Norman, 2002. "Oligopoly Deregulation in General Equilibrium: A Tax Neutralization Result," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0210, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    2. Innes, Robert, 2008. "Entry for merger with flexible manufacturing: Implications for competition policy," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 266-287, January.
    3. Gupta, Barnali & Lai, Fu-Chuan & Pal, Debashis & Sarkar, Jyotirmoy & Yu, Chia-Ming, 2004. "Where to locate in a circular city?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 759-782, June.
    4. George Norman & Jacques‐François Thisse, 1999. "Technology Choice and Market Structure: strategic aspects of flexible manufacturing," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 345-372, September.
    5. Ralph M. Braid, 2016. "Potential merger-forcing entry reduces maximum spacing between firms in spatial competition," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(3), pages 653-669, August.
    6. Pal, Debashis, 1998. "Does Cournot competition yield spatial agglomeration?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 49-53, July.
    7. Carsten Eckel, 2009. "International trade, flexible manufacturing, and outsourcing," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(4), pages 1449-1472, November.
    8. Phillip J. Lederer, 2020. "Location-Price Competition with Delivered Pricing and Elastic Demand," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 449-477, June.
    9. Ayd{i}n Alptekinou{g}lu & Charles J. Corbett, 2008. "Mass Customization vs. Mass Production: Variety and Price Competition," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 10(2), pages 204-217, August.
    10. Haimanti Bhattacharya & Robert Innes, 2016. "Concentration, Product Variety, and Entry-for-Merger: Evidence from New Product Introductions in the U.S. Food Industry," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1360-1376.
    11. Sílvia Ferreira Jorge & Cesaltina Pacheco Pires, 2004. "Delivered versus Mill Nonlinear Pricing in Free Entry Markets," Microeconomics 0409006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Akamatsu, Takashi & Takayama, Yuki & Ikeda, Kiyohiro, 2012. "Spatial discounting, Fourier, and racetrack economy: A recipe for the analysis of spatial agglomeration models," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(11), pages 1729-1759.
    13. Domenico SCALERA & Alberto ZAZZARO, 2004. "From regulation to free market: the experience of the European motor insurance market," Working Papers 205, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    14. Hennessy, David A. & Lapan, Harvey E., 2009. "Harmonic symmetries of imperfect competition on circular city," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1-2), pages 124-146, January.
    15. Jacques-François Thisse & Philip Ushchev, 2018. "Monopolistic competition without apology," Chapters, in: Luis C. Corchón & Marco A. Marini (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory and Industrial Organization, Volume I, chapter 5, pages 93-136, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Braid, Ralph M., 2001. "Cost-reducing horizontal mergers that leave prices unchanged in models of spatial competition," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 421-427, June.
    17. Chia-Hung Sun & Jyh-Fa Tsai & Fu-Chuan Lai, 2017. "Spatial Cournot Competition in a Circular City with More than Two Dispatches," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 68(4), pages 413-442, December.
    18. Norman, George, 2002. "The relative advantages of flexible versus designated manufacturing technologies," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 419-445, July.
    19. Scalera Domenico & Zazzaro Alberto, 2007. "The Unpleasant Effects of Price Deregulation in the European Third-Party Motor Insurance Market: A Theoretical Framework," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-30, October.
    20. Toshihiro Matsumura & Takao Ohkawa & Daisuke Shimizu, 2005. "Partial Agglomeration or Dispersion in Spatial Cournot Competition," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(1), pages 224-235, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:9415. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.