Marginal cost of public funds

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The marginal cost of public funds (MCF) is a concept in public finance which measures the loss incurred by society in raising less revenues to finance government spending due to the distortion of resource allocation caused by taxation. [1] Formally, it is defined as the ratio of the marginal value of a monetary unit raised by the government and the value of that marginal private monetary unit. The applications of the marginal cost of public funds include the Samuelson condition for the optimal provision of public goods and the optimal corrective taxation of externalities in public economic theory, the determination of tax-smoothing policy rules in normative public debt analysis and social cost-benefit analysis common in practical policy analysis.

Contents

History

The initial statement of the MCF problem is generally attributed to Pigou (1947), who stressed the application of the cost-benefit rule to the financing of public spending. [2] Later, the modification of the Samuelson rule for the optimal provision of public services through the inclusion of a measure of the MCF performed by Stiglitz and Dasgupta (1971), Diamond and Mirrlees (1971) and Atkinson and Stern (1974) proved to be a theoretical milestone. [3] Complementary, Harberger's (1964, 1971) contributions on the issue of excess burden measurement further influenced the development of the MCF concept, though he focused on the average excess burden (AEB) rather than on the MEB. The first attempt at measuring the MEB is commonly attributed to Campbell (1975). [4] Measurement of the MCF, however, was first attempted by Browning (1976), although the inclusion of "substitution effects" impairs his exercise. [5]

Conceptual foundations

The theoretical foundations of the MCF can be found in the excess burden of taxation as measured by equivalent variation, compensating variation and consumer surplus. Relatedly, the social MCF is the basis for the conditions of an optimal tax system and optimal spending on public services. Thus, the outcome of a tax reform can be calculated using pre- and post-reform MCFs as well as price indices. Practically, MCFs can be calculated based on the tax rate and the elasticities of demand and supply. It is consequently related to the (compensating variation-based) marginal excess burden of taxation (MEB), but is comparatively superior in terms of policy analysis. [6]

It is not a net cost, as it isolates the revenue side from the expenditure side of government. For microeconomic analysis, the social weights attributable to the origin and destination unit equally affect the net total.

According to Dahlby (2008), while a substantial literature on the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) has emerged over the last twenty years, much of this literature is fragmented because authors have used different measures for the MCF, or its associated concept, the marginal excess burden (MEB).

Criticism

Jacobs (2018) identifies four problems with respect to the marginal cost of public funds: (1) The lack of consensus in the literature on a common definition of the MCF, notably the dichotomy between the Pigou-Harberger-Browning (PHB) approach using compensated wage elasticities of labor supply and the Atkinson-Stern-Ballard-Fullerton (ASBF) approach using uncompensated wage elasticities of labor supply. (2) Contradicting intuition, standard MCF measures are unequal to one for non-distortionary lump-sum taxes. (3) The normalization of the tax system influences the MCF for both lump-sum and distortionary taxation. (4) Most MCF concepts ignore the reasons for distortionary taxes, namely, redistributional benefits. [7]

Literature

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10797-017-9481-0

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This aims to be a complete article list of economics topics:

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Public finance is the study of the role of the government in the economy. It is the branch of economics that assesses the government revenue and government expenditure of the public authorities and the adjustment of one or the other to achieve desirable effects and avoid undesirable ones. The purview of public finance is considered to be threefold, consisting of governmental effects on:

  1. The efficient allocation of available resources;
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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erik Lindahl</span> Swedish economist

Erik Lindahl was a Swedish economist. He was professor of economics at Uppsala University 1942–58 and in 1956–59 he was the President of the International Economic Association. He was an also an advisor to the Swedish government and the central bank, and in 1943 was elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Lindahl posed the question of financing public goods in accordance with individual benefits. The quantity of the public good satisfies the requirement that the aggregate marginal benefit equals the marginal cost of providing the good.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tax policy</span> Choice by a government as to what taxes to levy, in what amounts, and on whom

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In neoclassical economics, a market distortion is any event in which a market reaches a market clearing price for an item that is substantially different from the price that a market would achieve while operating under conditions of perfect competition and state enforcement of legal contracts and the ownership of private property. A distortion is "any departure from the ideal of perfect competition that therefore interferes with economic agents maximizing social welfare when they maximize their own". A proportional wage-income tax, for instance, is distortionary, whereas a lump-sum tax is not. In a competitive equilibrium, a proportional wage income tax discourages work.

Optimal tax theory or the theory of optimal taxation is the study of designing and implementing a tax that maximises a social welfare function subject to economic constraints. The social welfare function used is typically a function of individuals' utilities, most commonly some form of utilitarian function, so the tax system is chosen to maximise the aggregate of individual utilities. Tax revenue is required to fund the provision of public goods and other government services, as well as for redistribution from rich to poor individuals. However, most taxes distort individual behavior, because the activity that is taxed becomes relatively less desirable; for instance, taxes on labour income reduce the incentive to work. The optimization problem involves minimizing the distortions caused by taxation, while achieving desired levels of redistribution and revenue. Some taxes are thought to be less distorting, such as lump-sum taxes and Pigouvian taxes, where the market consumption of a good is inefficient, and a tax brings consumption closer to the efficient level.

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Several theories of taxation exist in public economics. Governments at all levels need to raise revenue from a variety of sources to finance public-sector expenditures.

Optimal capital income taxation is a subarea of optimal tax theory which studies the design of taxes on capital income such that a given economic criterion like utility is optimized.

Optimal labour income tax is a sub-area of optimal tax theory which refers to the study of designing a tax on individual labour income such that a given economic criterion like social welfare is optimized.

References

  1. Dahlby, B. (2008). The Marginal Cost of Public Funds: Theory and Application. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 1.
  2. Pigou, A.C. (1948). A Study in Public Finance. 3rd ed. London: Macmillan.
  3. Stiglitz, J.E., Dasgupta, P. (1971). Differential Taxation, Public Goods, and Economic Efficiency. Review of Economic Studies, 38(2), pp. 151-174.
  4. Campbell, H.F. (1975). Deadweight Loss and Commodity Taxation in Canada. Canadian Journal of Economics, 8(3), pp. 441-447.
  5. Browning, E.K. (1976). The Marginal Cost of Public Funds. Journal of Political Economy. 84(2), pp. 283-298.
  6. Dahlby (2008), pp. 11-13.
  7. "The Marginal Cost of Public Funds is One at the Optimal Tax System"