IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2810.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

If Labor is Inelastic, Are Taxes Still Distorting?

Author

Listed:
  • Don Fullerton

Abstract

Three recent papers measure the marginal excess burden of labor taxes in the United States. They obtain very different results even where they all use a zero uncompensated labor supply elasticity and assume that the additional revenue is spent on a public good that is separable in utility. The impression is that other parameters must explain the differences in results. Yet each paper uses a different concept of excess burden. Here, I calculate all three measures in one model and show how conceptual differences explain the results. Only one of these measures isolates the distortionary effects of taxes in a way that depends on the compensated labor supply elasticity. The other two measures incorporate income effects and thus depend on the actual change in labor. This result was obscured because those papers report positive marginal excess burden even with a zero uncomspensated labor supply elasticity. This paper shows conditions under which their measure is zero, and it interprets the measures in light of recent literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Don Fullerton, 1989. "If Labor is Inelastic, Are Taxes Still Distorting?," NBER Working Papers 2810, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2810
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2810.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. J. R. Hicks, 1943. "The Four Consumer's Surpluses," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 11(1), pages 31-41.
    2. Browning, Edgar K, 1987. "On the Marginal Welfare Cost of Taxation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(1), pages 11-23, March.
    3. Alan J. Auerbach & Harvey S. Rosen, 1980. "Will the Real Excess Burden Please Stand Up? (Or, Seven Measures in Search of a Concept)," NBER Working Papers 0495, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Auerbach, Alan J., 1985. "The theory of excess burden and optimal taxation," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 61-127, Elsevier.
    5. Triest, Robert K, 1990. "The Relationship between the Marginal Cost of Public Funds and Marginal Excess Burden," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 557-566, June.
    6. Bizer, David S & Stuart, Charles, 1987. "The Public Finance of a Protective Tariff: The Case of an Oil Import Fee," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 1019-1022, December.
    7. Ahmed, S. & Croushore, D.D., 1988. "Substitution Effects And The Marginal Welfare Cost Of Taxation," Papers 0-88-6, Pennsylvania State - Department of Economics.
    8. Ballard, Charles L., 1990. "Marginal welfare cost calculations : Differential analysis vs. balanced-budget analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 263-276, March.
    9. Hicks, J. R., 1986. "A Revision of Demand Theory," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198285502.
    10. King, Mervyn A., 1983. "Welfare analysis of tax reforms using household data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 183-214, July.
    11. Ballard, Charles L & Shoven, John B & Whalley, John, 1985. "General Equilibrium Computations of the Marginal Welfare Costs of Taxes in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(1), pages 128-138, March.
    12. Stuart, Charles E, 1984. "Welfare Costs per Dollar of Additional Tax Revenue in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 352-362, June.
    13. Diamond, P. A. & McFadden, D. L., 1974. "Some uses of the expenditure function in public finance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 3-21, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kaplow, Louis, 1990. "Optimal taxation with costly enforcement and evasion," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 221-236, November.
    2. Shaghil Ahmed & Dean Croushore, 1996. "The Marginal Cost of Funds With Nonseparable Public Spending," Public Finance Review, , vol. 24(2), pages 216-236, April.
    3. Jonathan Gruber, 2000. "Disability Insurance Benefits and Labor Supply," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(6), pages 1162-1183, December.
    4. Charles L. Ballard & Don Fullerton, 1992. "Distortionary Taxes and the Provision of Public Goods," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 117-131, Summer.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Charles L. Ballard & Don Fullerton, 1992. "Distortionary Taxes and the Provision of Public Goods," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 117-131, Summer.
    2. Chris Jones, 2005. "Why the Marginal Social Cost of Funds is not the Shadow Value of Government Revenue," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2005-449, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    3. Mickaël Beaud & Thierry Blayac & Patrice Bougette & Soufiane Khoudmi & Philippe Mahenc & Stéphane Mussard, 2013. "Estimation du coût d'opportunité des fonds publics pour l'économie française," Working Papers halshs-01077141, HAL.
    4. Helmuth Cremer & Firouz Gahvari, 1999. "Excise Tax Evasion, Tax Revenue, and Welfare," Public Finance Review, , vol. 27(1), pages 77-95, January.
    5. Nan, Gehuang D., 1995. "An energy Btu tax alternative," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 291-305, November.
    6. José Manuel González Páramo, 2003. "Midiendo el coste marginal en bienestar de una reforma impositiva," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 166(3), pages 115-147, September.
    7. Will Martin & James E. Anderson, 2005. "Costs of Taxation and the Benefits of Public Goods: The Role of Income Effects," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 617, Boston College Department of Economics.
    8. Ian Parry, 2002. "Tax Deductions and the Marginal Welfare Cost of Taxation," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 9(5), pages 531-552, September.
    9. Parry, Ian W. H., 2002. "Funding transportation spending in metropolitan Washington, DC: the costs of alternative revenue sources," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 362-390, September.
    10. Ming Chung Chang & Shufen Wu, 2011. "Should Marginal Cost of Public Funds include the Revenue Effect?," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 147(I), pages 1-16, March.
    11. Kleven, Henrik Jacobsen & Kreiner, Claus Thustrup, 2006. "The marginal cost of public funds: Hours of work versus labor force participation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(10-11), pages 1955-1973, November.
    12. Parry, Ian, 2001. "How Should Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Finance Its Transportation Deficit?," RFF Working Paper Series dp-01-12, Resources for the Future.
    13. Liqun Liu, 2006. "Combining Distributional Weights and the Marginal Cost of Funds," Public Finance Review, , vol. 34(1), pages 60-79, January.
    14. Warlters, Michael & Auriol, Emmanuelle, 2005. "The marginal cost of public funds in Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3679, The World Bank.
    15. Shaghil Ahmed & Dean Croushore, 1996. "The Marginal Cost of Funds With Nonseparable Public Spending," Public Finance Review, , vol. 24(2), pages 216-236, April.
    16. Snow, Arthur & Warren, Ronald Jr., 1996. "The marginal welfare cost of public funds: Theory and estimates," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 289-305, August.
    17. James E. Anderson & Will Martin, 2011. "Costs of Taxation and Benefits of Public Goods with Multiple Taxes and Goods," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 13(2), pages 289-309, April.
    18. Parry, Ian W.H., 1999. "Tax Deductions, Consumption Distortions, and the Marginal Excess Burden of Taxation," Discussion Papers 10801, Resources for the Future.
    19. Martin Feldstein, 1999. "Tax Avoidance And The Deadweight Loss Of The Income Tax," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 674-680, November.
    20. Seung-Rae Kim, 2002. "Environmental Taxes and Economic Welfare: The Welfare Cost of Gasoline Taxation in the U.S. 1959-1999," Public Economics 0201003, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 11 May 2004.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2810. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.