Cross-border shopping and the Atkinson-Stiglitz theorem

Sebastian Kessing, Bernhard Koldert

FiFo/ May 2013/ Study, Springer (publ.)

Abstract
We introduce cross-border shopping and indirect tax competition into a model of optimal taxation. The Atkinson–Stiglitz result that indirect taxation cannot improve the efficiency of information-constrained tax-transfer policies, and that indirect taxes should not be differentiated across goods, is shown to hold in this case even if countries are asymmetric. However, if the tax system must contain indirect taxation, differentiated indirect tax rates arise in the equilibrium and restricting differentiated indirect taxation can be welfare-increasing.