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Non-Welfarist Optimal Taxation And Behavioral Public Economics

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  • Kanbur, Ravi
  • Pirttila, Jukka
  • Tuomala, Matti

Abstract

Research in behavioural economics has uncovered the widespread phenomenon of people making decisions against their own good intentions. In these situations, the government might want to intervene, indeed individuals might want the government to intervene, to induce behaviour that is closer to what individuals wish they were doing. The analysis of such corrective interventions, through taxes and subsidies, might be called 'behavioural public economics'. However, such analysis, where the government has an objective function that is different from that of individuals, is not new in public economics. In these cases the government is said to be 'non-welfarist' in its objectives, and there is a long tradition of non-welfarist welfare economics, especially the analysis of optimal taxation and subsidy policy where the outcomes of individual behaviour are evaluated using a preference function different from the one that generated the outcomes. First of all the object of this paper is to present a unified view of the non-welfarist optimal taxation literature and, second, to present behavioural public economics as a natural special case of this general framework. Copyright 2006 The Authors Journal compilation � 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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File URL: http://purl.umn.edu/127150
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Paper provided by Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management in its series Working Papers with number 127150.

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Date of creation: Sep 2004
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Handle: RePEc:ags:cudawp:127150
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Keywords: Institutional and Behavioral Economics;

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  1. Ravi Kanbur & Michael Keen & Matti Tuomala, 1990. "Optimal Non-Linear Income Taxation for the Alleviation of Income Poverty," Working Papers 799, Queen's University, Department of Economics.
  2. Kanbur, R. & Keen, M., 1988. "Poverty, Incentives And Linear Income Taxation," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 298, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
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  20. Bruce Bradbury, 2004. "Targeting social assistance," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 25(3), pages 305-324, September.
  21. Schokkaert, Erik & Van de gaer, Dirk & Vandenbroucke, Frank & Luttens, Roland Iwan, 2004. "Responsibility sensitive egalitarianism and optimal linear income taxation," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 151-182, September.
  22. Ted O'Donoghue & Matthew Rabin, 2003. "Studying Optimal Paternalism, Illustrated by a Model of Sin Taxes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 186-191, May.
  23. DEL MAR RACIONERO, Maria, 1999. "Optimal redistribution with unobservable preferences for an observable merit good," CORE Discussion Papers 1999009, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
  24. Oswald, Andrew J., 1983. "Altruism, jealousy and the theory of optimal non-linear taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 77-87, February.
  25. Atkinson, A. B. & Stiglitz, J. E., 1976. "The design of tax structure: Direct versus indirect taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1-2), pages 55-75.
  26. Sen, Amartya K, 1976. "Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measurement," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(2), pages 219-31, March.
  27. Besley, Timothy J & Kanbur, S M Ravi, 1988. "Food Subsidies and Poverty Alleviation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 98(392), pages 701-19, September.
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  1. Non-Welfarist Optimal Taxation And Behavioral Public Economics
    by Alessandro Cerboni in Knowledge Team on 2013-12-31 23:39:20
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