Data and Code for: Ideology, Incidence and the Political Economy of Fuel Taxes: Evidence from the California 2018 Proposition 6

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Lucas Epstein, Yale University; Erich Muehlegger, University of California-Davis

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
Code			02/07/2024 12:57:PM
Data			02/07/2024 01:11:PM
README.pdf	application/pdf	586.2 KB	03/07/2024 10:45:AM
license.txt	text/plain	25.7 KB	02/07/2024 08:16:AM

Project Citation:

Epstein, Lucas, and Muehlegger, Erich. Data and Code for: Ideology, Incidence and the Political Economy of Fuel Taxes: Evidence from the California 2018 Proposition 6. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2024-03-07. https://doi.org/10.3886/E198176V1

Project Description

Summary: In 2018, California voters rejected Proposition 6, a ballot initiative that sought to repeal state gasoline taxes and vehicle fees enacted as part of the 2017 Road Repair and Accountability Act. We study the relationship between support for the proposition, political ideology and the economic burdens imposed by the Act. For every hundred dollars of annual per-household costs imposed by the Road Repair and Accountability Act, we estimate that support for proposition rose by 3 - 9 percentage points, roughly comparable to a commensurate increase in the share of ”liberal” voters. Notably, we find that the relationship between voting and the economic burden of the policy is seven times strong in the most conservative tracts relative to the most liberal tracts. This heterogeneity has important implications for the popular support for environmental taxes, as conservative areas in California and elsewhere tend to bear a higher burden from transportation and energy taxes than liberal areas.

Funding Sources: US Department of Transportation (USDOT Grant 69A3551747114)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Transportation taxes; Voting; Political Economy

Geographic Coverage: California Census Tracts

Time Period(s): 1/1/2018 – 12/31/2018 (2018)

Methodology

Unit(s) of Observation: Census Tracts

Geographic Unit: Census tracts

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Published Versions

V1 [2024-03-07]

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