Reforming Alcohol Taxes: Health and Fiscal Issues

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目有两个主要目标。首先，我们建议考虑两种外部性（例如，这些措施包括：减少酒后驾车对其他道路使用者造成的风险，减轻因酒精引起的疾病对公共或团体医疗服务造成的负担），以及在为政府预算提供资金时适当平衡消费税和其他税收。这将涉及开发一个概念模型的最佳酒精税的一部分，更广泛的财政制度，使用家庭数据，以发展某些行为的酒精税，这是必要的实施最佳税收模型的计量经济学估计，并更新和综合外部成本和其他参数值的现有证据。第二，我们将研究改善不同种类酒精饮料之间以及酒精税和酒后驾驶费之间税收负担分配的机会。这将涉及到使用理论模型来估计最佳税率对个别酒精饮料，为一定数额的总酒精税收入，并估计经济收益从转移一些酒精税负担对酒后驾车的处罚。这些税收改革给社会带来的净效益将与按比例增加所有现有酒精饮料税带来的效益进行比较，并将研究其对酒精消费、避免的死亡和非致命伤害/疾病以及与酒精有关的交通事故发生率的影响，以便在不同的改革方案中确定优先次序。此外，我们使用概念框架来解释美国和其他四个经合组织国家之间的税率差异，评估可能证明美国设定的消费税低于其他国家的因素（例如，较低的政府收入要求）和可能证明更高税收合理的因素（例如，美国酒后驾车的发生率更高）。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project has two main objectives. First, we propose to estimate the optimal level of alcohol taxation taking account of both externalities (e.g., the risk to other road users from drunk drivers, the burden on public or group medical services from alcohol-induced illness) and the appropriate balance between excise taxes and other taxes in financing the government's budget. This will involve developing a conceptual model of optimal alcohol taxes as part of the broader fiscal system, using household data to develop econometric estimates of certain behavioral responses to alcohol taxes that are necessary to implement the optimal tax model, and updating and synthesizing available evidence on external costs and other parameter values. Second, we will examine opportunities for improving the allocation of the tax burden between different kinds of alcoholic beverages and between alcohol taxation and drunk driver fees. This will involve using the theoretical model to estimate the optimal tax rate on individual alcoholic beverages, for a given amount of total alcohol tax revenue, and estimating economic gains from shifting some of the alcohol tax burden onto drunk driver penalties. The net benefits to society from these tax reforms will be compared with those from a proportionate increase in all existing alcoholic beverage taxes, and their implications for alcohol consumption, deaths and non-fatal injuries/illness avoided, and incidence of alcohol-related traffic accidents, will be studied in order to prioritize among different options for reform. Furthermore, we use the conceptual framework to explain differences in tax rates between the United States and four other OECD countries by assessing factors that might justify the United States setting lower excise taxes than in other countries (e.g., lower government revenue requirements) and factors that might justify higher taxes (e.g., the higher incidence of drunk driving in the United States).