Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jbcoan/v11y2020i3p457-478_6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Efficiency without Apology: Consideration of the Marginal Excess Tax Burden and Distributional Impacts in Benefit–Cost Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Boardman, Anthony E.
  • Greenberg, David H.
  • Vining, Aidan R.
  • Weimer, David L.
Abstract
Some issues in the application of benefit–cost analysis (BCA) remain contentious. Although a strong conceptual case can be made for taking account of the marginal excess tax burden (METB) in conducting BCAs, it is usually excluded. Although a strong conceptual case can be made that BCA should not include distributional values, some analysts continue to advocate doing so. We discuss the cases for inclusion of the METB and the exclusion of distributional weights from what we refer to as “core” BCA, which we argue should be preserved as a protocol for assessing allocative efficiency. These issues are topical because a recent article in this journal recommends ignoring the METB on the grounds that desirable distributional effects offset its cost. We challenge the logic of this article and explain why it may encourage inefficient policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Boardman, Anthony E. & Greenberg, David H. & Vining, Aidan R. & Weimer, David L., 2020. "Efficiency without Apology: Consideration of the Marginal Excess Tax Burden and Distributional Impacts in Benefit–Cost Analysis," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(3), pages 457-478, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jbcoan:v:11:y:2020:i:3:p:457-478_6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2194588820000184/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Spackman, Michael, 2021. "Social discounting and the cost of public funding in practice," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 111490, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Mark A. Moore & Aidan R. Vining, 2023. "PPP performance evaluation: the social welfare goal, principal–agent theory and political economy," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 56(2), pages 267-299, June.
    3. Spackman, Michael, 2023. "The social discount rate and the cost of public funds: a search for more consistency and better practice," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119814, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    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:cup:jbcoan:v:11:y:2020:i:3:p:457-478_6. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/bca .

    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.