Social Accounting and the Public Sector

This paper contributes to the theory of social accounting. As such, it tries to extend earlier literature on the welfare equivalence of the comprehensive net national product in two main directions, both of which refer to the public sector. One is by considering welfare measurement problems associated with redistributive policy and public good provision, when the public revenues are raised by distortionary taxes. The other is by addressing the consequences of a 'federation-like' decision structure, where independent tax and expenditure decisions are made both by the central government and by lower level governments. In particular, the analysis shows how so called vertical fiscal external effects, which are associated with tax base sharing among the central and lower level governments, contribute to social accounting.Welfare measurement; second best; public goods; economic federations

In Search of a Rationale for Differentiated Environmental Taxes

Environmental tax schemes in OECD countries often involve tax rates differentiated across industrial, commercial and household sectors. In this paper, we investigate four potentially important arguments for these deviations from uniform taxation: pre-existing tax distortions, domestic equity concerns, global environmental effectiveness, and strategic trade policy. Our primary objective is to ascertain whether the degree of tax differentiation observed in many countries can be rationalized on economic grounds. In simulations with a computable general equilibrium model, we calculate optimal policies under various settings. Our simulation results lead us to conclude that there is little economic rationale for the common policy practice of discriminating strongly in favor of heavy industries, even when accounting for interacting taxes, distributional concerns, leakage, and international market power. --optimal environmental taxation,computable general equilibrium