TY  - JOUR
AU  - Deaton,Angus
AU  - Ng,Serena
TI  - Parametric and Non-Parametric Approaches to Price and Tax Reform
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5564
PY  - 1996
Y2  - May 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5564
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5564.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Angus S. Deaton
328 Wallace Hall
Woodrow Wilson School
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ  08544-1013
Tel: 609/258-5967
Fax: 609/258-5974
E-Mail: deaton@princeton.edu

Serena Ng
Department of Economics
Columbia University
440 W. 118 St.
International Affairs Building, MC 3308
New York
NY 10027
Tel: 212-854-5488
E-Mail: serena.ng@columbia.edu
AB  - In the analysis of tax reform, when equity is traded off against efficiency, the measurement of the latter requires us to know how tax- induced price changes affect quantities supplied and demanded.  In this paper, we present various econometric procedures for estimating how taxes affect demand.  We examine advantages and disadvantages of parametric methods of tax reform analysis and suggest that the nonparametric `average derivate estimator' is a useful alternative. We apply both parametric and nonparametric methods to analyze possible price reform for foods in rural Pakistan, and discuss the issues that remain to be dealt with in empirical welfare analyses.
ER  -