Economic integration and the choice of commodity tax base with endogenous market structures

This paper analyzes the choice of commodity tax base when countries set their taxes non-cooperatively in a two-country symmetric reciprocal dumping model of intra-industry trade with free entry and trade costs. We show that the consumption base (destination principle) dominates the production base (origin principle) when trade costs are high or demand is linear. For lower levels of trade costs and nonlinear demand, the welfare ranking of the two tax bases is ambiguous. Hence, there is no clear preference for a tax principle with an ongoing movement towards closer economic integration.