Modifying Export Taxes and Quotas To Make Them Less Market-Distorting

This paper examines how conventional export taxes and quotas can be modified to make them less market-distorting, and thereby less welfare-diminishing. The modified policies achieve the same economic objectives of the tax or quota, such as reducing the domestic price of the exported good, increasing domestic purchases, and raising revenue, but also generate additional exports beyond the volume that the tax/quota alone would allow. Also, the policies do not involve any government subsidies to either producers or consumers. We examine two scenarios. The first is when a tax or quota is already in place, as in the case of longstanding export taxes that many countries maintain for exports of agricultural, fishery, and forestry products, minerals, and metals. The second scenario is when a measure is not yet in place but a country wishes to impose one, as in the case of short run agricultural export restrictions that countries have enacted in recent years to restrain increases in domestic food commodity prices. We also examine the outcome when the country does and does not have world market power in the exported good.