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Hidden Baggage: Behavioral Responses to Changes in Airline Ticket Tax Disclosure
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Hidden Baggage: Behavioral Responses to Changes in Airline Ticket Tax Disclosure

Sebastien Bradley and Naomi E. Feldman
American economic journal. Economic policy, v 12(4), pp 58-87
01 Nov 2020
url
https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20190200View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open Maybe Open Access (Publisher Bronze)

Abstract

Business & Economics Economics Social Sciences
We examine the impact of a January 2012 enforcement action by the US Department of Transportation that required US air carriers and online travel agents to modify their web interfaces to incorporate all ticket taxes in up-front, advertised fares. We show that the more prominent display of-tax-inclusive prices is associated with significant reductions in consumer tax incidence, demand, and ticket revenues along more-heavily taxed itineraries. In particular, the fraction of unit taxes that airlines passed onto consumers fell by roughly 75 cents for every dollar of tax. These results present evidence of consumer inattention in a novel institutional setting featuring-quasi-experimental variation in tax salience, -economically significant tax amounts, and endogenous price responses.

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19 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#1 No Poverty
#10 Reduced Inequalities
#17 Partnerships for the Goals

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Economics
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