Economics Working Papers

Economics Working Papers
Author: Knud Jørgen Munk
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2008
Genre:
ISBN:

Download Economics Working Papers Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Welfare Effects of Tax and Price Changes and the CES-UT Utility Function

Welfare Effects of Tax and Price Changes and the CES-UT Utility Function
Author: Knud J. Munk
Publisher:
Total Pages: 23
Release: 2008
Genre:
ISBN:

Download Welfare Effects of Tax and Price Changes and the CES-UT Utility Function Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Dixit's 1975 paper quot;Welfare Effects of Tax and Price Changesquot; constitutes a seminal contribution to the theory of tax reform within a second-best general equilibrium framework. The present paper clarifies ambiguities with respect to normalisation which has led to misinterpretation of some of Dixit's analytical results. It proves that a marginal tax reform starting from a proportional tax system will improve social welfare if it increases the supply of labour, whatever the rule of normalisation adopted. In models which impose additive separability between consumption and leisure in household preferences this insight cannot be articulated. This paper proposes as an alternative a parameterised utility function with explicit representation of the use of time, the CES-UT, which allows a flexible representation of the relationship between consumption and leisure. It also demonstrates how standard compensated price elasticities can be derived from the parameters of the CES-UT and how it may be used for applied tax reform analysis.

Welfare Effects of National Taxes in an Economy with Regions

Welfare Effects of National Taxes in an Economy with Regions
Author: Jeffrey D. Petchey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre:
ISBN:

Download Welfare Effects of National Taxes in an Economy with Regions Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The present paper illustrates that changes in national commodity and income tax rates will affect the location choices of mobile factors of production within an economy with regions as well as the total supply of these factors to the economy. It is also argued that revenue (expenditure) neutral changes in the tax mix, for example, an increase in the commodity tax combined with a decrease in the income tax rate, will affect the domestic distribution of mobile factors, their supply to the economy and social welfare. In other words, revenue neutrality should not be used as a guide to the welfare effects of tax mix changes.

The Welfare Effects of Tax Competition Reconsidered

The Welfare Effects of Tax Competition Reconsidered
Author: Eckhard Janeba
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008
Genre:
ISBN:

Download The Welfare Effects of Tax Competition Reconsidered Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The views on the welfare effects of tax competition differ widely. Some see the fiscal externalities as the cause for underprovision of public goods, while others see tax competition as means to reduce government inefficiencies. Using a comparative politics approach we show that tax competition among presidential-congressional democracies is typcially welfare improving, while harmful among parliamentary democracies if under the latter the marginal benefit of the public good is sufficiently high. The results hold when politicians seek re-election because of exogenous benefits of holding office. By contrast, when politicians hold office only to extract rents, tax competition is harmful if politicians are sufficiently patient.

The Welfare Effects of Persuasion and Taxation

The Welfare Effects of Persuasion and Taxation
Author: Matthias Rodemeier
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

Download The Welfare Effects of Persuasion and Taxation Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

How much information should governments reveal to consumers if consumption choices have uninternalized consequences to society? How does an alternative tax policy compare to information disclosure? We develop a price theoretic model of information design that allows empiricists to identify the welfare effects of any arbitrary information policy. Based on this model, we run a natural field experiment in cooperation with a large European appliance retailer and randomize information regarding the financial benefits of energy-efficient household lighting among more than 640,000 subjects. We find that full information disclosure strongly decreases demand for energy efficiency, while partial information disclosure increases demand. More information reduces social welfare because the increase in consumer surplus is outweighed by the rise in environmental externalities. By randomizing product prices, we identify the optimal tax vector as an alternative policy and show that sizable taxes on energy-inefficient products yield larger welfare gains than any information policy. We also document an important policy interaction: information provision dramatically reduces attention to pecuniary incentives and thereby limits the effectiveness of taxes.