税负归宿异常

This article reviews the literature on the incidence of commodity and labor taxes and focuses on empirical results that show stark departures from the canonical model of tax incidence, which I refer to as anomalies. In particular, there is mounting evidence questioning three fundamental implications of the canonical model: ( a ) that statutory incidence is irrelevant for economic incidence, ( b ) that the relative magnitude of the demand and supply elasticities is a sufficient statistic for tax incidence, and ( c ) that tax incidence is symmetric for increases and decreases. I review this empirical evidence and draw implications for the canonical model's relevance.