This dissertation investigates the commodity tax and corporate income tax. Chapter 1 provides a general introduction and Chapter 2 consists of a literature review. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze how state governments determine their commodity tax rate and respond to other state and federal government tax rate changes. We construct and estimate the household utility function and the state government objective function, and compute the slope of the reaction functions to evaluate the tax interactions between state governments and between state and federal governments. We find that horizontal tax interactions are very small and that state governments do not change their tax rate even though the neighboring state governments change their tax rates. On the other hand, vertical tax interactions are positive, and if the federal government increases its tax rate, state governments also raise their tax rates to preserve their tax base. Chapter 5 discusses how the corporate income tax affects firm location and exit decisions. We compute and compare three kinds of individual firm-level tax rates and examine the effect of these corporate income taxes on firm location and exit behaviour. We find that each tax rate has a different distribution across provinces and that using a different tax provides a different interpretation of tax effects. In most cases, high corporate income tax rates are found to discourage firm location choice and encourage firm exit decisions. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2011-02-28 15:19:49.8

搜尋理論是訊息經濟學中很重要的一部份，搜尋行為有助於決策約滿意度。本文研究的重點主要在於商品市場上的消費者價格搜尋、消費決策及其與政府課稅之間的關係。 在消費者採用連續搜尋，而且假設搜尋不可回溯，搜尋次數有限，價格分配已知時，搜尋決策其有保留價格的性質。以「向後求解」的方法，消費者可以得到各期之保留價格。保留價格是稟賦所得、搜尋成本、其他財貨價格、效用函數及價格分配型態的函數。假設其他條件不變，若稟賦所得減少，搜尋成本增加，則保留價格上升；隨著已搜尋約次數增加，保留價格跟著上升，亦即消費者在搜尋過程中會愈來愈願意接受較高的價格。 消費者從事搜尋行為時的保留價格和搜尋成本會對消費決策產生影響。保留價格不但決定停止搜尋的時機，也會影饗真正從事購買的價格；可以用來消費的淨所得因搜尋次數的多寡而增減，所以等於也受到保留價格的影響。外生變數變動會改變保留價格，進而間接影饗預期需求，包括改變可接受價格之範圍和停止搜尋機率；然而，同時也會直接影響需求函數，總合上述兩者才能決定對預期需求的影響為何，結果通常使預期需求增減不易判別。預期搜尋次數與保留價格成反向關係。 政府對需要搜尋的財貨課從量稅，使價格分配向右平移，保留價格會隨之上升，但上升的幅度不會剛好等於稅率。稅率愈高，保留價格上升幅度愈大。平均而言，消費者因為租稅轉嫁必須支付較高的價格，所以會減少需求，此為課稅的直接影響；再加上提高保留價格而封預期需求產生間接影響，結果需求增減不易確定。在政府追求社會福利極大且受限於固定稅收之下，得到價格訊息不完全的最適租稅法則，比價格確定時多出了社會搜尋效果，包括課稅對願接受價格上下限和停止搜尋機率的影響，主要是透過課稅改變保留價格來達成。 假若效用函數為 Cobb-Douglas 的型態，價格呈一致分配，則由模擬方析結果發現，課稅後需搜尋財貨預期需求量減少，不需搜尋財貨預期需求量增加，預期效用降低且搜尋次數減少。