Reforming Alcohol Taxes: Health and Fiscal Issues

描述(由申请人提供)：这个项目有两个主要目标。首先，我们建议在估计酒精税的最佳水平时，既要考虑外在因素(例如酒后驾驶对其他道路使用者的风险、公共或团体医疗服务因酒精引致的疾病所带来的负担)，又要考虑消费税与其他税项在资助政府预算方面的适当平衡。这将涉及开发一个最优酒类税的概念模型，作为更广泛的财政体系的一部分，使用家庭数据来对实施最优税制所必需的酒类税的某些行为反应进行计量经济学估计，以及更新和综合关于外部成本和其他参数值的现有证据。第二，我们会研究如何改善不同酒类之间的税负分配，以及酒精税和酒后驾驶费之间的分配。这将涉及到使用理论模型来估计在给定的酒精类税收总额下，个人酒精饮料的最佳税率，并估计将部分酒精税负担转移到酒后驾驶处罚上的经济收益。这些税制改革为社会带来的净效益，将与按比例增加所有现有酒精饮品税所带来的净效益作比较，并会研究它们对饮酒、避免死亡和避免非致命伤害/疾病，以及与酒精有关的交通意外发生率的影响，以便在不同的改革方案中作出优先次序。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，方法是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)和可能证明较高的税收合理的因素(例如，美国酒后驾车的发生率较高)。

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).