Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence
通过超市实地实验和酒精消费数据分析，发现消费者对不显著的税收反应不足；提出了考虑显著性效应的福利分析框架，表明税收的经济归宿取决于法定归宿。
Using two strategies, we show that consumers underreact to taxes that are not salient. First, using a field experiment in a grocery store, we find that posting tax-inclusive price tags reduces demand by 8 percent. Second, increases in taxes included in posted prices reduce alcohol consumption more than increases in taxes applied at the register. We develop a theoretical framework for applied welfare analysis that accommodates salience effects and other optimization failures. The simple formulas we derive imply that the economic incidence of a tax depends on its statutory incidence, and that even policies that induce no change in behavior can create efficiency losses.