Tax Interdependence in American States

State governments finance their expenditures with multiple tax instruments, so when collections from one source decline, they are typically compensated by greater revenues from other sources. This paper addresses the important question of the extent to which personal and corporate income taxes are used to compensate for sales tax fluctuations within the U.S. states. The results show that one percent increase in the sales tax rate is associated with a half and a third percent decrease in the personal and corporate income tax rates respectively. In terms of tax revenues per capita, the results show that a one percent increase in the sales tax revenue per capita is associated with a 3 percent and a 0.9 percent decrease in the corporate and personal income tax revenue per capita respectively. On average then, an exogenous reduction of $4.5 in the sales tax revenue per capita is compensated, ceteris paribus, with an increase of either$3.4 in the collections per capita from corporate taxes or $3.6 in the ones from personal income taxestax mix, state taxes, instrumental variables

The Effect of Sales Tax Rates on Food Exemptions

In this paper I explore the relationship between the sales tax rate and the tax treatment of food in American states. One of the main difficulties in the empirical estimation of this relationship is that state governments set the two tax policy variables. This produces a potential endogeneity problem that would bias the estimates if not considered. I use instrumental variables to solve the problem and to identify the effect of the sales tax rate on the probability of having a food exemption. The empirical results show that, on average, a one percentual point increase in the sales tax rate increases by 20% the probability of having a food exemption.Food Exemption, Sales Tax, Instrumental Variables

Tax Interdependence in the U.S. States

State governments finance their expenditures with multiple tax instruments, so when collec-tions from one source decline, they are typically compensated by greater revenues from other sources. This paper addresses the important question of the extent to which personal and cor-porate income taxes are used to compensate for sales tax ‡uctuations within the U.S. states. The results show that one percent increase in the sales tax rate is associated with a half and a third percent decrease in the personal and corporate income tax rates respectively. In terms of tax revenues per capita, the results show that a one percent increase in the sales tax revenue per capita is associated with a 3 percent and a 0.9 percent decrease in the corporate and personal income tax revenue per capita respectively. On average then, an exogenous reduction of $4.5 in the sales tax revenue per capita is compensated, ceteris paribus, with an increase of either$3.4 in the collections per capita from corporate taxes or $3.6 in the ones from personal income taxes.

Testing for Market Power under the Two-Price System in the U.S. Copper Industry

Before 1978, most of the U.S. domestic copper production and an important fraction of the imports were traded at a price set by the major U.S. producers. Simultaneously, the rest of the world was trading copper at prices determined in auction markets. This two-price system ended in 1978, when the largest U.S. producers began using the Comex price of refined copper as a benchmark for setting their prices. Using this regime shift I test empirically the competitive behavior of the US copper industry before 1978. The results show that copper prices were close to the ones predicted by a competitive model of the industry.Copper Industry, Market Power

Spatial Inequality in Chile

Despite success in reducing poverty over the last twenty years, inequality in Chile has remained virtually unchanged, making Chile one of the least equal countries in the world. High levels of inequality have been shown to hamper further reductions in poverty as well as economic growth and local inequality has been shown to affect Duch outcomes as violence and health. The study of inequality at the local level is thus crucial for understanding the economic well-being of a country. Local measures of inequality have been difficult to obtain, but recent theoretical advances have enabled the combination of survey and census data to obtain estimators of inequality that are robust at disaggregated geographic levels. In this paper, we employ this methodology to produce consistent estimators of inequality for every county in Chile. We find a great deal of variation in inequality, with county-level Gini coefficients ranging from 0.41 to 0.63.Inequality, poverty mapping, Chile

The Impact of State Corporate Taxes on FDI Location

This paper examines the effects of state corporate income taxes on the location of foreign direct investment, taking into account the state governments' behavior when setting taxes. Ignoring the tax setting behavior of states may bias the estimate of the tax effects on foreign direct investment. States have a set of characteristics that influence investors' decisions, some of them are not observable by a researcher but states take them into account when they set taxes. States can also act strategically with respect to other states when setting taxes. The former behavior bias the estimated tax e ?ects because it creates correlation between the error term and the tax rate. The latter behavior directly implies an endogenous tax rate. We adapt a discrete choice model of differentiated products to estimate the tax effects. This approach allows us at the same time to control for the outside options of investors and to use instrumental variables to solve the problem of tax endogeneity. We find the tax elasticity to be consistently around -1.

Anticipated Capitalization of the Santiago Metro System on Housing Prices

Housing units with closer access to public transportation enjoy a higher market value than those with similar characteristics but poorer access. This difference can be explained by the less expensive cost of transport to the main workplaces and shopping areas in town. For this reason, investments in public transport infrastructure, for example, building a new metro line, are capitalized totally or partially on land property and housing prices. This work analyzes empirically the degree of capitalization on housing prices when the new Line 4 of the Santiago de Chile Metro System was built. In particular, and given that the new line started operating in December 2005, the degree of anticipated capitalization on housing prices at the moment of announcing construction of Line 4 and at the moment of informing on the basic engineering to determine the location of the stations has been estimated. A unique data base has been used, containing all home buying and selling operations in the Greater Santiago between December 2000 and March 2004. The results show that the average apartment price rose between 3.3% and 4.4% as a consequence of having announced the construction, and between 4.5% and 5.7% after information on the location of the stations was made known. This increase was not distributed evenly but depended on the distance to the closest station. An indirect effect of this kind of capitalization is that property tax collection increases if landed property is reassessed according to the price rise. This effect is not negligible in magnitude and could stand for a minimum between 14% and 20% of investment in the new metro line, which gives way to an interesting discussion with respect to the form of financing the metro network extension.Metro, Apartment Prices, Anticipated Capitalization

Inequality at Low Levels of Aggregation in Chile*

Despite success in reducing poverty over the last twenty years, inequality in Chile has remained virtually unchanged, making Chile one of the least equal countries in the world. High levels of inequality have been shown to hamper further reductions in poverty as well as economic growth, and local inequality has been shown to affect such outcomes as violence and health. The study of inequality at the local level is thus crucial for understanding the economic well-being of a country. Local measures of inequality have been difficult to obtain, but recent theoretical advances have enabled the combination of survey and census data to generate estimates of inequality that are robust at disaggregated geographic levels. In this paper, we employ this methodology to produce consistent and precise estimates of inequality for every county in Chile. We find considerable heterogeneity in county-level estimates of inequality, with Gini coefficients ranging from 0.41 to 0.63. An appendix includes estimated inequality for each county so the broader research community may assess the effect of local inequality on a broad range out outcomes, as well as analyze the determinants of inequality itself.inequality, poverty mapping, government subsidies, cash transfers, Chile

Interjurisdictional Capitalization of a New Metro Line on Housing Values

Many governments continue constructing new subway lines with the goal of reducing congestion and pollution in large cities. Besides the potential global effects on reducing negative externalities in the city, there are some local positive effects in terms of lower commuting time and distance for residents living close to the subway stations. These benets of the public transport services should capitalize totally or partially on housing prices. Most of the empirical work has estimated the effects on housing prices after the public transit infrastructure is operating and implicitly assumed homogeneous capitalization across jurisdictions. However, due to differences on local public goods provision and residents' characteristics across jurisdictions, two identical housing units located at the same distance to the nearest metro station but in different local markets would not necessarily have the same degree of capitalization. Using parametric and non-parametric methods and transaction data for Santiago, Chile, we estimate the anticipated capitalization of a new metro line across counties in the city. The results show signicant anticipated effects, between 3.6% and 5.3%, and also large interjurisdictional differences in capitalization degrees, ranging between -6% and 40%.Metro, Capitalization, Housing Prices

Cash Transfers and Poverty Reduction in Chile

By all accounts, poverty in Chile has declined dramatically over the last 20 years, with the nacional headcount ratio declining from nearly 40% in 1987 to below 14% in 2006. Due to data limitations, most research on poverty in Chile has focused on national and regional estimates, yet recent improvements in poverty mapping methodologies now enable the analysis of poverty at the sub-regional level. In this paper, we employ these methodologies to assess the impact of cash transfers on poverty rates at the county level. We find that transfers significantly reduce the incidence of poverty and that estimated headcount ratios fall by between 5% and 68%. To better understand variation in the effectiveness of transfers in reducing poverty at the local level, we also explore the interplay between transfers and geography. We find that the greatest reductions in poverty at the county level occur in rural households and that topography influences the effectiveness of transfers in some areas. Taken together, these findings suggest that targeting at low levels of aggregation can help to deliver further reductions in poverty.inequality, poverty mapping, government subsidies, cash transfers, Chile