IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cgd/wpaper/446.html

Analytic Foundations: Measuring the Redistributive Impact of Taxes and Transfers

Author

Listed:
  • Ali Enami
  • Nora Lustig
  • Rodrigo Aranda

Abstract

This paper provides a theoretical foundation for analyzing the redistributive effect of taxes and transfers for the case in which the ranking of individuals by pre-fiscal income remains unchanged. We show that in a world with more than a single fiscal instrument, the simple rule that progressive taxes or transfers are always equalizing not necessarily holds, and offer alternative rules that survive a theoretical scrutiny. In particular, we show that the sign of the marginal contribution unambiguously predicts whether a tax or a transfer is equalizing or not.

Suggested Citation

  • Ali Enami & Nora Lustig & Rodrigo Aranda, 2017. "Analytic Foundations: Measuring the Redistributive Impact of Taxes and Transfers," Working Papers 446, Center for Global Development.
    • Handle: RePEc:cgd:wpaper:446
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cgdev.org/publication/analytic-foundations-redistributive-impact-taxes-transfers?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/analytic-foundations-redistributive-impact-taxes-transfers.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Martinez Aguilar,Sandra Natalia & Fuchs Tarlovsky,Alan & Ortiz-Juarez,Eduardo & Del Carmen Hasbun,Giselle Eugenia, 2017. "The impact of fiscal policy on inequality and poverty in Chile," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7939, The World Bank.
    2. Nora Lustig, 2020. "Inequality and Social Policy in Latin America," Working Papers 2011, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    3. Shamma A. Alam & Gabriela Inchauste & Umar Serajuddin, 2017. "The Distributional Impact of Fiscal Policy in Jordan," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 44, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    4. Bernardo Candia & Eduardo Engel, 2018. "Taxes, Transfers and Income Distribution in Chile: Incorporating Undistributed Profits," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 82, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    5. Selçuk Gemicioğlu & Burça Kızılırmak & Uğur Akkoç, 2024. "Relative contributions of indirect taxes and inflation on inequality: What does the Turkish data reveal?," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 286-309, February.
    6. Nora Lustig, 2017. "Fiscal Policy, Income Redistribution and Poverty Reduction in Low and Middle Income Countries," Working Papers 1701, Tulane University, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2017.
    7. Nora Lustig, 2016. "Fiscal Policy, Inequality and the Poor in the Developing World," Working Papers 1612, Tulane University, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2017.
    8. Ali Enami, 2016. "An Application of the CEQ Effectiveness Indicators: The Case of Iran," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 58, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    9. Nga Thi Viet Nguyen & Ivica Rubil, 2021. "Fiscal Policies, Inequality, and Poverty in Croatia," Working Papers 2104, The Institute of Economics, Zagreb.
    10. Stephen D. Younger & Artsvi Khachatryan, 2017. "Fiscal Incidence in Armenia," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 43, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    11. Eirini Andriopoulou & Eleni Kanavitsa & Chrysa Leventi, 2020. "The distributional impact of recurrent immovable property taxation in Greece," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 44(4), pages 505-528.
    12. Lustig, Nora, 2017. "El impacto del sistema tributario y el gasto social en la distribución del ingreso y la pobreza en América Latina. Una aplicación del marco metodológico del proyecto Compromiso con la Equidad (CEQ)," El Trimestre Económico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, vol. 0(335), pages .493-568, julio-sep.
    13. Matteo Dalle Luche & Demetrio Guzzardi & Elisa Palagi & Andrea Roventini & Alessandro Santoro, 2024. "Tackling the regressivity of the Italian tax system: An optimal taxation framework with heterogeneous returns to capital," World Inequality Lab Working Papers halshs-04753529, HAL.
    14. Huimin Liao & Hongyu Liu & Jinxian Wang, 2026. "Relative Poverty and Antipoverty Effects of Public and Private Transfers in China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 1-21, January.
    15. Stephen D. Younger & Eric Osei-Assibey & Felix Oppong, 2017. "Fiscal Incidence in Ghana," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 47-66, November.

    More about this item

    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:cgd:wpaper:446. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Publications Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cgdevus.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.