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Revenue‐enhancing Trade Liberalization in a Differentiated Duopoly
Author(s) -
Shim Kieun,
Jeong Kyonghwa
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
review of development economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.531
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1467-9361
pISSN - 1363-6669
DOI - 10.1111/rode.12247
Subject(s) - tariff , economics , imperfect competition , consumption tax , consumption (sociology) , international economics , revenue , product differentiation , free trade , tax revenue , government revenue , liberalization , ad valorem tax , welfare , tax reform , microeconomics , public economics , market economy , finance , social science , sociology
Existing studies suggest that in developing countries, tax reforms that increase consumption taxes can compensate for shortfalls in revenue from a tariff reduction. However, these revenue‐enhancing tariff–tax reforms have a critical shortcoming—they generally reduce welfare under imperfect competition. This paper shows that tax reforms such as consumption tax reforms do not necessarily have to be implemented to make up for revenue shortfalls from tariff reductions under imperfect competition, because trade liberalization through tariff cuts leads to an increase in government revenue when domestic and imported goods have a high substitutability. This revenue‐enhancing effect of a tariff reduction occurs for a wider degree of product substitutability when initial tariff and consumption tax rates are high. More importantly, we show that even if initial tariff and consumption tax rates are sufficiently low, a tariff reduction still increases government revenue for a low degree of product differentiation under Bertrand competition.