Applied Welfare Economics uses important results in the welfare
economics literature to extend a conventional Harberger cost-benefit
analysis. After reviewing the properties of different welfare measures
a conventional welfare equation is used to evaluate marginal policy
changes in a general equilibrium economy with tax distortions. The
analysis is extended to accommodate trade and income taxes, time,
internationally traded goods, and non-tax distortions, including
externalities, non-competitive behaviour, public goods and price
quantity controls. The welfare analysis is developed in stages, and
where possible is explained using diagrams, to make it more adaptable
to the different institutional arrangements encountered in applied
work. With this in mind, computable welfare expressions are solved
using demand and supply elasticities for each good. The lump-sum
transfers used in a conventional analysis to separate welfare effects
are carefully examined to identify the role of the marginal social
cost of public funds (MCF) in policy evaluation. The main contribution
in the book is to separate income effects for marginal policy changes
in the shadow value of government revenue, which converts efficiency
effects into dollar changes in private surplus. It is a scaling
coefficient that makes income effects irrelevant in single
(aggregated) consumer economies, and conveniently isolates
distributional effects in heterogeneous consumer economies. The
decomposition is used to test for Pareto improvements, and to examine
the separate but related roles of the shadow value of government
revenue and the MCF in applied work.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191536014
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
OUP Oxford
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter