President Clinton has seized the cigarette excise tax as an expedient and politically correct means of increaseing federal revenue. In 1994 the federal government took in $12 billion from the present...

President Clinton has seized the cigarette excise tax as an expedient and politically correct means of increaseing federal revenue. In 1994 the federal government took in $12 billion from the present 24-cents-per-pack tax. If the tax were quadrupled to $1 a pack, Clinton figures tax revenues would increase by more than $50 billion over three years. Those added revenues would help finance the heath care reforms the president so dearly wants.

Professor Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago,says Clinton math is wrong. The White House assumed that cigarettes sales would drop by 4 percent for every 10 percent increase in prices, not the full adjustment of smokers' behavior. Over a three-year period, cigarette consumption is likely to decline by 8 percent for every 10 percent increase in price-twice as much as Clinton assumed.As a result,the $1-a-pack tax will bring in much less revenue than President Clinton projected.

According to Professor Becker, by how much would cigarette prices have to rise to get a 15 percent reduction in smoking in

(a) One year?

(b) three years?