This paper provides an introduction to modelling the choice of linear income tax rate in both majority voting and social welfare maximising contexts. Although the basic problem in each case — of finding the most preferred tax for the median voter and the welfare maximising tax for an independent judge or decision-maker — can be simply stated, it is usually not possible to obtain explicit solutions even for simple assumptions about preferences and population heterogeneity. The present paper instead gives special attention to a formulation of the required conditions in terms of easily interpreted magnitudes, the elasticity of average earnings with respect to the tax rate and a measure of inequality. The inequality measure takes the same basic form in each model (depending either on median earnings or a weighted average of earnings, where the weights depend on value judgements regarding inequality aversion. The approach enables the comparative static effects of a range of parameter changes to be considered. The results are reinforced using numerical examples based on the constant elasticity of substitution utility function.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Length: 30 pages Date of creation: 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:mlb:wpaper:1006
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 5th Floor, Economics and Commerce Building, Victoria, 3010, Australia Phone: +61 3 8344 5289 Fax: +61 3 8344 6899 Email: Web page: http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Colemann Leong).
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: