Aiming to support downstream processing, the Indonesian government announced an export tax in May 2010. Using a partial equilibrium approach, this paper therefore attempts to analyse: (i) whether the Indonesian government has imposed optimal taxes on cocoa beans; (ii) the impacts of cocoa export taxes on domestic welfare. In particular, it attempts to develop a two-stage partial equilibrium welfare analysis in which effects of policy for upstream sectors may affect downstream sectors. The study also presents thorough econometric estimates of import demand, export supply, Armington and cross elasticities using the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) to deal with cointegration and simultaneity issues. A literature search suggests that existing studies not... |