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Costs of Taxation and the Benefits of Public Goods: The Role of Income Effects

Author

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  • Will Martin

    (World Bank)

  • James E. Anderson

    (Boston College)

Abstract

The fact that raising taxes can increase taxed labor supply through income effects is frequently used to justify very much lower measures of the marginal welfare cost of taxes and greater public good provision than indicated by traditional, compensated analyses. We confirm that this difference remains substantial with newer elasticity estimates, but show that either compensated or uncompensated measures of the marginal cost of funds can be used to evaluate the costs of taxation– and will provide the same result– as long as the income effects of both taxes and public good provision are incorporated in a consistent manner.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:617
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. Lars Calmfors & Giancarlo Corsetti & Michael P. Devereux & Gilles Saint-Paul & Hans-Werner Sinn & Jan-Egbert Sturm & Xavier Vives, 2008. "Chapter 4: Industrial policy," EEAG Report on the European Economy, CESifo, vol. 0, pages 105-124, February.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    fiscal policy; second best; public goods; distortions; costs of taxation; marginal cost of funds; marginal excess burden; thought experiment.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • F11 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Neoclassical Models of Trade
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate

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