Monday, November 07, 2005

Gas Tax Redux

A few months ago, I posted a couple of times on my preference for a gas tax compared to the CAFE standards. Today, I happened across two papers by Professor Jayanta Sen that are, at the very least, quite provocative. They focus on ways that the U.S. could make itself better off by (in the first paper) taxing an imported good that has a relatively inelastic supply and by (in the second paper) forming an international cartel of importing countries, to offset the market power of OPEC. Here are the abstracts, with links to the full papers at SSRN:

A Tax to Save the US $100 billion a Year and Solve Global Warming?

The position of the current US administration is that moves to reduce consumption of gas (like the Kyoto Treaty), will harm the US economy. On the contrary I show that a tax on crude would transfer wealth of $100+ billion a year from foreign governments to the US consumers, thus providing a major economic stimulus to the economy while at the same time reducing consumption of gas. Over the past decade crude oil prices have increased from $12 (1998) to over $65 a barrel. The amount of net oil exported to [by] importing countries is about 28 million barrels a day. With 1998 prices as a reference, this translates to an additional wealth transfer of $1.32 billion a day, or $480 billion a year. If the supply of oil is inelastic, then an increase in tax by the governments of importing countries would push up oil prices and decrease the wealth transfer. For a range of demand and supply elasticities that I study, the wealth transfer savings for the United States (which has about one-third of global oil imports) should be in the range of $108 to $152 billion a year. The new tax revenues to the US government from tax on imported oil should be $160 billion to $250 billion a year. This money can be returned to the US consumers as a lump sum, thus providing the economic stimulus. The reduction in crude oil consumption ranges from 7.13% to 10.30% while providing a stimulus (defined as additional purchasing power to consumers) to the economy of $95 billion to $133 billion a year.

Oil at $10 a Barrel and $200 Billion Savings a Year for the U.S.: Benefits to the U.S. from a Buyer's Cartel

In the international oil market, the producers are cartelized, whereas the buyers are fragmented. As standard economic analysis suggests, this results in a greater share of the surplus for the producers. The cost of production for a barrel of oil to the producers is approximately $8, whereas the recent price is $65. A buyer's cartel could be formed by the governments of the major oil importing countries like the U.S., Japan, Germany, China, India etc. All oil sold in these countries would have to pass through the buyer's cartel. The buyer's cartel could negotiate a price with the oil exporting countries, say $10 a barrel (which should be a sufficient markup over production costs). After purchasing oil from the producing countries, the buyer's cartel would release the oil in the market and let demand determine the price. If current demand conditions remain unchanged then the price would still remain at $65. However, this would reduce the effective price to the citizens of the importing countries to $10 a barrel as their governments would earn a profit of $55, which could be used to reduce taxes or pay for programs like Social Security. For the U.S. (which imports 10 million barrels a day) the savings would be $55 x 10 million x 365 = $200.75 billion a year.

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9 comments:

spencer said...

I find it hard to think of any reason why a tax at the pump would be superior to a tariff. A tax at the pump would dampen consumption but would do nothing for supply. A tariff would raise the domestic price of crude and induce greater domestic supply as well as dampen consumption.

why do you advocate a tx at the pump?

PGL said...

Spencer - imagine an inelastic short-run supply curve as I just did over at Angrybear. Hint, hint, I'm disagreeing with something Milton Friedman just signed on this topic.

Anonymous said...

A tax at the pump would build in a "cushion". In the event of a rare emergency where oil prices skyrocket, the tax could be temporarily relaxed until normalcy is restored.

does this seem a legitimate way of thinking?

Anonymous said...

arun:

enjoy your postings. great work on your blog.

i have a technical grammar point. it is "an" when you before words that start with vowels (a,e,i,o,u). it is "a" for words that start with consonants (everything except the 5 vowels, y may be a wild card).

"an oil" not "a oil"

Andrew said...

Spencer,

I prefer the gas tax to the tariff because I want to tax all of the oil, not just the imports. I don't want to retreat from free trade principles if I don't have to (even with OPEC), and I want to do as much as possible to reduce the externalities (congestion, pollution) associated with gasoline use.

Andrew

Anonymous said...

Andrew,

Buying from OPEC isn't what I would call free trade.

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LowTax said...

It seems to me that almost everything in life has costs and consequences. Why is it that people can't simply accept life for what it is rather than trying to manipulate it into some other form that is SUBJECTIVELY better?

If wealth transfer and subjective externalities are what we should be concerned about because consumers like (read: choose) imports, then why not tax all cars as well? While we're at it, let's tax clothing, food, alcohol, raw materials and anything else that might involve 'wealth transfer' to other nations or which may have 'externalities.' We can tax ourselves into richness!

Why is it that economists are so loathe to simply let the market work rather than trying to come up with yet another 'solution' to some perceived problem?

Air pollution is no longer a problem in this country since the invention of the catalytic converter and other smog limiting devices/techniques. Traffic is an externality that affects drivers who CHOOSE to drive. Can't we simply learn to live with our choices and value freedom and responsibility over fancy schemes from above that are 'good for us'?

LowTax said...

Tom, I think you misread me. What I am advocating is that we let oil prices do what they naturally do in a free market rather than manipulating them for some subjective greater good. With regards to the externality of air pollution, I am fully in favor of using a tax to offset any readily quantifiable damages like air pollution. My comments about the catalytic converter should have clued you into this - I am not against trying to make sure that the price of gas reflects its actual costs. But raising the price for the primary reason of stemming imports is what is being presented here, not a proposal to fix some social ill being caused by oil. We have already paid for the invention of the catalytic converted and today's air pollution levels are not harmful (and are continuing to go down). With regards to traffic, those who drive already face that cost in terms of having to pay for roads and waiting for traffic to move, it does not need to be further reflected in the price of oil.

With regards to mandating efficiency through these types of taxes, it is again an imposition of one set of people's will over another. It could be argued that efficiency is always good for business and nations as a whole, but that argument is less appealing to normal people in their daily lives. I do not necessarily wish to be efficient with many things in my life and having the government force me into it through taxes is tyrannical.

It dismays me that economists have moved so far into the realm of believing they know what is best for everybody else.