TY  - JOUR
AU  - DeCicca,Philip
AU  - Kenkel,Donald S.
AU  - Liu,Feng
TI  - Who Pays Cigarette Taxes?  The Impact of Consumer Price Search
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15942
PY  - 2010
Y2  - April 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15942
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15942.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Philip DeCicca
Department of Economics
422 Kenneth Taylor Hall
McMaster University
Hamilton, ON L8S 4M4
CANADA
Tel: 905/525-9140
E-Mail: decicca@mcmaster.ca

Donald S. Kenkel
Department of Policy Analysis and Management
College of Human Ecology
Cornell University
Martha Van Rensselaer Hall
Ithaca, NY  14853-4401
Tel: 607/255-2594
Fax: 607/255-0799
E-Mail: dsk10@cornell.edu

Feng Liu
School of Economics and Institute for Advanced Res
777 Guoding Road
Shanghai 200433, China
E-Mail: fliu22@gmail.com
AB  - We conduct an empirical study of the impact of consumer price-search on the shifting of cigarette excise taxes to consumer prices.   We use novel data on the prices smokers report actually paying for cigarettes.  We document substantial price dispersion.  We find that cigarette  taxes are shifted at lower rates to the prices paid by consumers who undertake more price search – carton buyers, and especially, smokers who buy cartons of cigarettes in a state other than their state of residence.  We also find suggestive evidence that taxes are shifted at slightly higher rates to the prices paid by non-daily smokers, less addicted smokers, and smokers of light cigarettes.
ER  -