Reproducibility package for Who Benefits From Food Tax Exemptions In Lower-Income Settings? Evidence On Pass-Through And Incidence
Overview
Tax exemptions for basic items exist worldwide, typically justified by governments as a way to reduce the cost of living for poorer households. We study the unanticipated removal of consumption taxes on selected food items in Papua New Guinea by conducting a difference-in-differences analysis using administrative data, a supermarket price census, web-scraped online prices, and a nationally representative, household phone survey panel. We find complete pass-through in formal supermarkets in central urban districts, where retail competition is strong, but no pass-through in informal stores or rural areas, where poorer households mainly shop. Only 16 percent of the foregone revenue accrued to the poorest two quintiles, while the richest two quintiles and stores/wholesalers each captured almost 40 percent of the benefits. This degree of regressivity and variation in pass-through was unanticipated by 237 experts who participated in a prediction survey. Using a static MVPF-style comparison, we show that universal cash transfers would generate roughly two and a half times as much Q1-weighted value per fiscal dollar as the tax exemption. Our findings demonstrate that food tax exemptions are inherently regressive in lower-income settings, due to high informality, substantial market segmentation, and positive income elasticity of demand for basic food.
Reproducibility Package
| Repository name | URI |
|---|---|
| Reproducible Research Repository (World Bank) | https://reproducibility.worldbank.org |
Reproducibility
Paper exhibits were reproduced on a computer with the following specifications:
• OS: macOS
• Processor: Apple M4 Pro
• Memory available: 24 GB
• Software version: Stata 19.5 MP, R 4.6.
Run time: 20 minutes.
To reproduce the findings of this paper, a new user should do the following:
- Obtain the data (see the data section) and place the files under
Data/Raw/…, following the folder names listed indata_hash_report.csv. - Open the
maindo-file and set the top-level directory on the single line marked for that purpose. - Run the
maindo-file. Note that there is a pause partway through the script. - Open the
mainR script, set the same directory on line 26, and run the script in full. - Return to the
maindo-file and press any key. It runs the analysis and writes all tables and figures toOutputs/.
Because some of the data is restricted, the exhibits generated by the replicators are included in the package so that interested users can review them against the published paper.
Note: The package contains Python code that was not run by the replicators. It is a web-scraping script that would have produced a different dataset than the one used in the paper, since the live sites change over time. The data resulting from that code will instead be deposited in the Microdata Library along with the rest of the non-restricted data. Running the Python code is therefore not needed to reproduce the findings of this paper and was not run by the replicators.
Data
Some data is restricted and has not been included in the reproducibility package. For more details, please refer to the README file.
Description
| Author | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Christopher Hoy | World Bank | choy@worldbank.org |
| Ruggero Doino | World Bank | rdoino@worldbank.org |
| Matias Strehl-Pessina | University of California, Santa Barbara | mstrehlpessina@ucsb.edu |
| Darian Naidoo | World Bank | dnaidoo@worldbank.org |
| Kingtau Mambon | University of Papua New Guinea | kingtau.mambon@upng.ac.pg |
| Bobby Kunda | University of Papua New Guinea | bobby.kunda@upng.ac.pg |
2026-07-15
Scope and coverage
| Location | Code |
|---|---|
| Papua New Guinea | PNG |
Disclaimer
The materials in the reproducibility packages are distributed as they were prepared by the staff of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this event do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Bank, the Executive Directors of the World Bank, or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the materials included in the reproducibility package.
Access and rights
| Name | URI |
|---|---|
| MIT License | https://opensource.org/license/mit |
| World Bank IGO Rider | https://github.com/worldbank/metadata-editor/blob/main/WB-IGO-RIDER.md |
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Christopher Hoy | World Bank | choy@worldbank.org |
| Reproducibility WBG | World Bank | reproducibility@worldbank.org |
Information on metadata
| Name | Abbreviation | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reproducibility WBG | DECDI | World Bank - Development Impact Department | Verification and preparation of metadata |
2026-07-15
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