{"title":"Why are grocery foods taxed in the United States? Theory and spatial evidence from multilevel government interactions","authors":"Lingxiao Wang , Yuqing Zheng","doi":"10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2023.103959","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Grocery food sales taxes (or grocery taxes) in the United States are applied in the form of a state and/or county tax. To investigate how local governments establish these grocery taxes, we develop a dynamic gaming model to explain the county–county and county–state interactions regarding grocery taxes. Leveraging novel panel data on grocery taxes at county and state levels from 2006 to 2017, we estimate a dynamic spatial model including multilevel governments. The empirical evidence unveils three key spatial determinants that contribute to variations in county grocery tax rates. (1) A negative vertical impact from the home state, (2) a positive horizontal effect from neighboring counties, and (3) a positive diagonal effect from neighboring states.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48196,"journal":{"name":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","volume":"104 ","pages":"Article 103959"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Regional Science and Urban Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046223000947","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Grocery food sales taxes (or grocery taxes) in the United States are applied in the form of a state and/or county tax. To investigate how local governments establish these grocery taxes, we develop a dynamic gaming model to explain the county–county and county–state interactions regarding grocery taxes. Leveraging novel panel data on grocery taxes at county and state levels from 2006 to 2017, we estimate a dynamic spatial model including multilevel governments. The empirical evidence unveils three key spatial determinants that contribute to variations in county grocery tax rates. (1) A negative vertical impact from the home state, (2) a positive horizontal effect from neighboring counties, and (3) a positive diagonal effect from neighboring states.
期刊介绍:
Regional Science and Urban Economics facilitates and encourages high-quality scholarship on important issues in regional and urban economics. It publishes significant contributions that are theoretical or empirical, positive or normative. It solicits original papers with a spatial dimension that can be of interest to economists. Empirical papers studying causal mechanisms are expected to propose a convincing identification strategy.