Figures for 1995 estimate trading by dealers in the foreign exchange market at over $1,200 billion per day, most of it with other dealers. Some have linked this volume to concerns of excessive volatility in the market. Tobin's proposal to address this volatility with a small tax on all foreign exchange transactions has not received the serious attention it deserves. The paper argues that a better case can be made for the proposition that the tax might dampen exchange rate volatility than most economists believe. Calculations show that the tax, unlike some forms of capital control, would fall far more heavily on short-term transactions than long-term. Survey data and a simple model suggest, in turn, that short-term activity can be destabilizing. The paper also offers crude estimates of the revenue that would be raised from the Tobin tax. It is left to other authors to examine a major shortcoming of the proposal, enforceability.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
5422.
Length: Date of creation: Jan 1996 Date of revision: Publication status: published as in the Tobin Tax: Coping with Financial Volatility, Mahbub Ul Haq, Inga Kaul and Isabelle Grunberg, eds. Oxford University, (with E. Stein and S.J. Wei), American Economic Review, 86, no.2, May 1996, pp.52-56. Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5422
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990.
"Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-38, August.
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Other versions:
Cutler, David M & Poterba, James M & Summers, Lawrence H, 1991.
"Speculative Dynamics,"
Review of Economic Studies,
Blackwell Publishing, vol. 58(3), pages 529-46, May.
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Other versions:
David M. Cutler & James M. Poterba & Lawrence H. Summers, 1990.
"Speculative Dynamics,"
NBER Working Papers
3242, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Culter, D.M. & Poterba, J.M. & Summers, L.H., 1990.
"Speculative Dynamics,"
Working papers
544, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
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