IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ays/ispwps/paper1105.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public Goods, Labor Supply and the Source of Economic Distortions

Author

Abstract

According to the conventional public finance literature any tax instrument other than the lump-sum tax is inherently distortionary because it alters relative prices. This paper revisits the case of the labor income tax and shows that its supposedly distortionary effects are the result of a stringent assumption about labor supply behavior. The conventional time allocation model generally assumes that taxpayers disregard the marginal benefits of taxation, received in the form of additional public goods, in their labor supply responses to the labor income tax. In line with previous literature stressing the importance of government spending for labor supply behavior, this paper generalizes the traditional model by describing the behavior of taxpayers that consider both the marginal costs and the marginal benefits of the labor income tax. Under these less stringent assumptions the paper derives an efficient (undistorted) solution to the public goods problem, where taxpayers contribute to the public goods in accordance to their individual marginal benefits while the relative value of leisure remains equal to the pre-tax wage rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Cristian Sepúlveda, 2010. "Public Goods, Labor Supply and the Source of Economic Distortions," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper1105, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    • Handle: RePEc:ays:ispwps:paper1105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://icepp.gsu.edu/files/2017/10/ispwp1105.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64, pages 416-416.
    2. J. E. Stiglitz & P. Dasgupta, 1971. "Differential Taxation, Public Goods, and Economic Efficiency," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 151-174.
    3. Auerbach, Alan J. & Hines, James Jr., 2002. "Taxation and economic efficiency," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 21, pages 1347-1421, Elsevier.
    4. Kenneth J. Arrow, 1950. "A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58, pages 328-328.
    5. Blundell, Richard & Macurdy, Thomas, 1999. "Labor supply: A review of alternative approaches," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 27, pages 1559-1695, Elsevier.
    6. Blundell, Richard, 2016. "Labor Supply and Taxation," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198749806 edited by Peichl, Andreas & Zimmermann, Klaus F., Decembrie.
    7. Vidar Christiansen, 1981. "Evaluation of Public Projects under Optimal Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 48(3), pages 447-457.
    8. A. B. Atkinson & N. H. Stern, 1974. "Pigou, Taxation and Public Goods," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(1), pages 119-128.
    9. (IFS), Institute for Fiscal Studies (ed.), 2010. "Dimensions of Tax Design: The Mirrlees Review," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199553754, Decembrie.
    10. 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.
    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. Huet-Vaughn, Emiliano & Robbett, Andrea & Spitzer, Matthew, 2019. "A taste for taxes: Minimizing distortions using political preferences," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).

    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. Bas Jacobs, 2010. "The Marginal Cost of Public Funds is One," CESifo Working Paper Series 3250, CESifo.
    2. Geir Bjertnaes, 2015. "Social Security Transfers and the Marginal Cost of Public Funds," CESifo Working Paper Series 5689, CESifo.
    3. Kaplow, Louis, 2006. "Public goods and the distribution of income," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(7), pages 1627-1660, October.
    4. Claus Thustrup Kreiner & Nicolaj Verdelin, 2008. "Optimal Provision of Public Goods: A Synthesis," EPRU Working Paper Series 08-05, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    5. Bas Jacobs, 2018. "The marginal cost of public funds is one at the optimal tax system," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(4), pages 883-912, August.
    6. Louis Kaplow, 2004. "On the (Ir)Relevence of Distribution and Labor Supply Distortion of Government Policy," NBER Working Papers 10490, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Eskeland, Gunnar S., 2000. "Environmental protection and optimal taxation," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2510, The World Bank.
    8. Liqun Liu, 2006. "Combining Distributional Weights and the Marginal Cost of Funds," Public Finance Review, , vol. 34(1), pages 60-79, January.
    9. Sanz Labrador, Ismael & Sanz-Sanz, José Félix, 2013. "Política fiscal y crecimiento económico: consideraciones microeconómicas y relaciones macroeconómicas," Macroeconomía del Desarrollo 5367, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    10. 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.
    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. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. Liqun Liu & Andrew J. Rettenmaier & Thomas R. Saving, 2004. "A Generalized Approach to Multigeneration Project Evaluation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(2), pages 377-396, October.
    15. 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.
    16. Hoel, Michael, 2008. "Environmental Taxes in an Economy with Distorting Taxes and a Heterogeneous Population," Memorandum 04/2008, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    17. Geir H. M. Bjertnæs, 2020. "The marginal (opportunity) cost of public funds," Discussion Papers 925, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    18. Bovenberg, A. Lans & Goulder, Lawrence H., 2002. "Environmental taxation and regulation," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 23, pages 1471-1545, Elsevier.
    19. Adachi, Takanori & Fabinger, Michal, 2022. "Pass-through, welfare, and incidence under imperfect competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    20. Michael Lundholm, 2008. "Decentralizing Public Goods Production," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(2), pages 259-279, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    public goods; distortion; Lindahl price; labor tax; lump-sum tax; labor supply;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ays:ispwps:paper1105. 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: Paul Benson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ispgsus.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.