Commodity taxation and regulatory competition

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is twofold. We first investigate whether product market regulations affect commodity taxation in open-to-trade economies, and second, we study the strategic interaction in regulatory measures between trading partner countries. We present a two-country general equilibrium model in which destination-based commodity taxes finance public goods, and product market regulation affects both the number of firms in the market and product diversity. Based on data for 21 OECD countries over the 1990–2008 period, we provide empirical evidence suggesting that product market regulations are strategic complement policies and that domestic regulations have a negative impact on domestic commodity taxation.