ESA (Vic) 2014 Professional Development Seminar #14 - Jeffrey T. LaFrance 'We “should drink” no wine before it's time'

The topic

Many products – wine, aged cheese, cultured pearls, timber, livestock production – are characterized by multi-period production, and aging processes. The dynamic aspect of these types of goods changes the impacts of excise and ad valorem taxes in several ways. We analyze the effects of several common yet widely diverse tax systems on the quantity and quality of such goods in a dynamic competitive economy. We evaluate four specific types of taxes commonly observed in developed economics: (1) ad valorem retail sales tax, which is assessed as a percentage of the final sales price; (2) volumetric retail sales tax, which is assessed at a fixed rate per unit; (3) ad valorem storage tax, which is assessed on the current value of the good while it is owned and aged by the producer prior to sale; and (4) volumetric storage tax, which is assessed per unit of the good while it is owned and aged by the producer prior to sale. We find that many standard results in the taxation literature are reversed.

The speaker

Jeffrey LaFrance is a Distinguished Academic Professor of Economics at Monash University in Melbourne Australia. He has been on the faculty at Washington State University, the University of California – Berkeley, the University of Arizona, Montana State University, and the University of Washington. His research interests include food, agricultural and natural resource policy, microeconomic theory, models, and methods, consumer and producer behavior under risk and uncertainty, natural resources and the environment, dynamic systems, and econometric models and methods. Honors include: Outstanding PhD Dissertation, Quality of Research Discovery, Outstanding Master’s Thesis Major Professor, Best Journal Article, and Fellow from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association; Outstanding Master’s Thesis, Outstanding Published Research, Outstanding Professional Service, and Distinguished Scholar from the Western Agricultural Economics Association; Senior Fulbright Research Scholarship from the Council on International Education; the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Innovation and External Collaboration and Distinguished Academic Professor of Economics from Monash University; and Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Resource Economics from Washington State University. He has received grants from the United States Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, and many state and private agencies and organizations. His Bachelor of Science degree in Economics (1977) and his Master of Science in Applied Economics (1979) are from Montana State University and his PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics (1983) is from the University of California – Berkeley. At Monash University Professor LaFrance teaches microeconomic theory, conducts research on theoretical and applied microeconomics, policy analyses, and food, agriculture, natural resources and the environment, and serves as Director of the Higher Degrees by Research program in the Economics Department. Dr. LaFrance also continues as an adjunct faculty member, working with faculty and graduate students in the School of Economic Sciences and Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health at Washington State University and the in Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC–Berkeley.