Discriminatory Taxes are Unpopular

Autor(en)

Rupert Sausgruber, Jean-Robert Tyran

Abstrakt

We explore the political acceptance of taxation in commodity markets. Participants in our experiment earn incomes by trading and must collectively choose one of the two tax regimes to raise a given tax revenue. A “uniform tax” (UT) imposes the same tax rate on all markets and is fair in that it yields the same – but low – income to participants in all markets. The “discriminatory tax” (DT) imposes a higher burden on markets with inelastic demand and is therefore efficient but it is also unfair in that incomes are unequal across markets. We find that DT is unpopular, as predicted. Surprisingly, however, DT remains unpopular when they are both efficient and produce a fair (equal) distribution. We conclude that non-discrimination (equal treatment) is a salient fairness principle in taxation that shapes voting on commodity taxes above and beyond concerns for efficiency and equal distribution

Organisation(en)

Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Wiener Zentrum für Experimentelle Wirtschaftsforschung

Externe Organisation(en)

Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (WU)

Journal

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Band

108

Seiten

463-476

Anzahl der Seiten

14

ISSN

0167-2681

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2013.12.022

Publikationsdatum

2014

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

502045 Verhaltensökonomie, 502024 Öffentliche Wirtschaft, 502038 Steuerlehre

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Economics and Econometrics, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/discriminatory-taxes-are-unpopular(a5e19e6e-d268-4f60-b82d-70ac83749a56).html