Question
Cigarette excise tax varies widely across states. For example, state cigarette tax is $1.36 in Indiana, $0.44 in North Dakota, and $4.35 in New York.
Cigarette excise tax varies widely across states. For example, state cigarette tax is $1.36 in Indiana, $0.44 in North Dakota, and $4.35 in New York. Sometimes local excise taxes are added to the state taxes, so in NYC with $1.50 per pack local tax added, the total tax per pack amounts to $5.85. (The highest such combined state-local tax rate is found in Chicago, IL at $7.16 per pack.)
expatistan.com reports a price of $14 per (Marlboro) package in NYC (as of Nov/9/2021). Assume this price includes the combined state-local tax of $5.85.
Assume the demand for cigarettes in NYC is given by = 17.8 0.2 and supply is given by = 2 1.3. (Price is measured in USD, quantity in millions of packs per month.)
- If cigarettes production (the supply curve) looks the same everywhere, what do you think the lower excise cigarettes tax in some states suggests about the elasticity of demand?
- Assuming there are no negative externalities to smoking, what would be the perfectly competitive amount consumed and the price in equilibrium, without the tax?
- What is the currently consumed quantity and price (for consumers, and for producers) with the current tax of $5.85? What are the government tax revenues, and what is the caused DWL?
"It's worse to breathe it than to smoke it": Secondhand smoke beliefs [...] in the United States (Int. Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health,2020, 17(22): 8630.)
Smoking actually has a massive negative effect on public health, not only on smokers but also on those surrounding them (secondhand smoke effects).
- Assuming the marginal external cost (MEC) is linear of the form: = , and assuming that the tax imposed by the government ($5.85) is the right tax rate: in that, it results in a socially optimal amount of cigarettes consumed; find the following:
, the DWL that would have been caused by the negative externality (smoking) in a perfectly competitive market without government intervention (the levels found in (b)); the total external cost that the government saved by limiting the quantity of cigarettes (using the excise tax).
[Hint: If the tax is the optimal one then MSC should intersect the demand curve exactly at the current price-consumption levels with the tax imposed; using that point you can identify MSC and MEC]
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