Pay to Send Email?
N. Gregory Mankiw posted a semi-tongue-in-cheek note on his blog suggesting that we consider a system where email senders pay to send a message. One of Mankiw’s readers opined…
I think an excellent Pigouvian tax would be a tax on emails. Many emails involve a negative externality (I don’t really want to receive them) and almost all the ones I really want to get are worth much more than a penny or so to the sender. So a penny tax (say) on email would probably generate large amounts of revenue, mitigate an important negative externality, and have minimal inefficient disincentives. Since email servers are necessarily centralized and networked and all email senders are ipso facto connected to an ISP who is charging them for access the transactions costs and evasion problems seem low.
As a reminder, a Pigovian tax is one that is levied to change market behavior – typically to address a market failure like externalities or to prevent over consumption of a common good. Mankiw extends the idea, hoping that the recipient could set the price. If someone wanted to seriously reduce the email they received – limiting to only those messages from people who really care – then they could set a high price for allowing a message to appear in their inbox.
Interesting idea. It’ll never happen, but it is interesting nonetheless.
I teach principles of economics courses and a course in the economics of healthcare at Southern Oregon University.
