Taxation by Auction: Fund-Raising by 19th Century Indian Guilds

We describe a unique institution used by 19th century Indian guilds to raise funds: The guild members agreed that on a particular day all but one of their shops would be shut. An auction would be held to determine which one shop would remain open, and the winning bid would go to the guild funds. We compare this “taxation by auction” mechanism with more conventional tax schemes and show that under certain conditions, not only will a majority of the guild members prefer to be taxed via an auction, but that this form of taxation will be more equitable than other forms.Auctions, Fund-Raising, Indian Guilds, Taxation

Egalitarian Equivalence under Asymmetric Information

We propose a definition of egalitarian equivalence that extends Pazner and Schmeidler’s (1978) concept to environments with incomplete information. If every feasible allocation rule can be implemented by an incentive compatible mechanism (as, for instance, in the case of non-exclusive information), then interim egalitarian equivalence and interim incentive efficiency remain compatible, as they were under complete information. When incentive constraints are more restrictive, on the other hand, the two criteria may become incompatible.Pareto Efficiency: Egalitarian Equivalence; Asymmetric Information

Choice and the composition of general practice patient registers

Choice of general practice (GP) in the National Health Service (NHS), the UKs universal healthcare service, is a core element in the current trajectory of NHS policy. This paper uses an accessibility-based approach to investigate the pattern of patient choice that exists for GPs in the London Borough of Southwark. Using a spatial model of GP accessibility it is shown that particular population groups make non-accessibility based decisions when choosing a GP. These patterns are assessed by considering differences in the composition of GP patient registers between the current patient register, and a modelled patient register configured for optimal access to GPs. The patient population is classified in two ways for the purpose of this analysis: by geodemographic group, and by ethnicity. The paper considers choice in healthcare for intra-urban areas, focusing on the role of accessibility and equity

Inception report on the Technical Assistance study (T.A. No. 1481-PAK): Crop based irrigation operations in the NWFP

Irrigation systems / Irrigation practices / Cropping systems / Water requirements / Pakistan

Social justice in Australian education : rethinking what we know for contemporary times

In this paper I attempt two things. First I canvass the history of social justice policy in schooling and higher education in Australia, with a view to drawing out ten principles to inform a rejuvenated social justice agenda in education, facilitated at this political moment by the current Australian Government’s financial and education commitments to/for people in low socioeconomic status communities, schools and higher education. I draw primarily on what we have learned from the 1973 Karmel Report and the Disadvantaged Schools Program to which it gave rise, and on the 1990 higher education policy statement, A Fair Chance for All. I then propose three new concepts for rethinking social justice in education, which reflect a new ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams 1961) and new social capacities in contemporary times

The Distributional Effects of Environmental Tax Reform

In recent years there has been increased debate about the potential for shifting the incidence of the tax system away from a variety of economic goods (i.e. employment, investment, etc...) and towards environmental bads (i.e. pollution emissions, resource extraction, etc ...). However, in spite of their apparent efficiency, economic instruments have been adopted relatively less frequently than direct regulation to mitigate environmental damages. One reason may be that some of the distributional implications of environmental tax reform have not been adequately recognized and addressed. How the costs and benefits of environmental policies are distributed in society is critical for their application since this will play a significant role in determining whether or not a particular measure is likely to be politically feasible. Moreover, for a given level of aggregate economic wealth, a redistribution of resources from richer households toward poorer households will tend to increase overall social welfare, and vice versa. While environmental measures should not be the instrument through which distributional objectives are realized, their growing importance means that distributional implications can no longer be ignored, particularly in the face of increasing economic inequality in many countries. This report reviews some of the distributional implications of environmental tax reform in the residential energy, road transport and agriculture sectors. While some of the most important distributional issues are related to the direct financial burden of the tax, this study also reviews some of the other distributional implications. In particular, it looks at the indirect effects on goods and services through input-output linkages, the potentially mitigating effects through different forms of revenue recycling, the distribution of indirect economic effects such as employment opportunities, as well as the distribution of social and environmental effects such as personal health and exposure to pollutants. The paper argues that in many cases the distributional consequences of environmental tax reform may be distinctly regressive, at least in terms of relative tax burdens. The distribution of environmental and social consequences are much less readily quantifiable, but in many cases their effects may be progressive. However, this depends very much on the sector affected and the precise form of the reform introduced. In addition, the revenue raised by environmental taxes (unlike most other environmental policy measures) provide the means whereby some of these adverse distributional consequences can be mitigated and even reversed. Finally, by addressing market failures and barriers which impact particularly upon lower-income households some measures which mitigate the adverse distributional effects of environmental tax reform can also improve the economic efficiency of the reform. Thus, if designed appropriately, environmental tax reform can meet both distributional and environmental objectives in an efficient manner. On the basis of the evidence reviewed it is concluded that distributional concerns, while important in many cases, should not prevent or delay the introduction of environmental taxes. Rather, they should serve as guiding principles in the design of environmental tax reform not only for their own sake, but also because efficiency objectives and equity objectives can be complementary in a well-designed package of environmental tax reform.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Has equity\u27s time come for VET? Observations and principles for equity policy and practice in Australian education

Equity has a long history in education. When compulsory schooling was first introduced in industrialising nations in the mid 1800s, many advocates saw it as a way of improving the circumstances of the poorest and most disadvantaged in their communities. But access to schooling did not prove to be the great equaliser that some had hoped. Instead, it became central in the reproduction of social and economic inequalities (Bourdieu & Passeron 1977). High academic achievement became highly correlated with high socioeconomic status, and vice versa (Teese & Polesel 2003). In Australia, the Karmel Report (1973) proved to be a watershed moment in naming the equity problem in schooling and, among other things, gave rise to the Disadvantaged Schools Program (DSP): an attempt to level the playing field albeit by ‘running twice as hard’ (Connell at al. 1991). Almost two decades later, A Fair Chance for All (1990) signalled official concern for equity in Australian higher education. While access to university was not to be universal, it was to be equitable; all social groups in the Australian population were to be proportionally represented among its university students. Today, Australia is still grappling with the inequities in its schooling and higher education systems, highlighted by renewed interest by governments to address the issues. Although not of the same order of magnitude, there now appears to be an emerging policy agenda around equity in VET. Has equity’s time come for VET? This paper canvasses the history of equity in Australian schooling and higher education, with a view to drawing out principles to inform a rejuvenated equity agenda in vocational education and training

Examining Connections between Gendered Dimensions of Inequality and Deforestation in Nepal

The United Nations recognizes empowering women as a key component of achieving numerous development-related goals. Qualitative studies suggest that communities where men and women have equal levels of agency over resource allocation and land tenure sometimes experience decreases in forest degradation and deforestation, all else being equal. However, these patterns are spatially heterogeneous, as are patterns of gender inequality in terms of land tenure and agency. This paper uses data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to quantify the relationship between gender inequality and ecosystem degradation using three linear regression models, Empirical Bayesian Kriging, and mapping the intersections between gender inequality and deforestation. Results from LASSO, Ordinary Least Squares, and Stepwise regression models show that there is no linear relationship between gender inequality and deforestation. Additionally, the distributions of gender inequality as it pertains to land tenure and deforestation are highly heterogeneous over space, indicating potential sociocultural and sociodemographic factors not captured in my data. Further work should focus on identifying ways to incorporate complex gender dynamics into environmental planning at multiple levels of forest governance

Copmment on Egalitarianism under Incomplete Information

The paper aims at extending the egalitarian principle to environments with incomplete information. The approach is primarily axiomatic, focusing on the characteristic property of monotonicity: no member of the society should be worse off when more collective decisions are available. I start by showing the incompat- ibility of this property with incentive efficiency, even in quasi-linear environments. This serious impossibility result does not follow from the mere presence of incentive constraints, but instead from the fact that information is incomplete (asymmetric information at the time of making a decision). I then weaken the monotonicity property so as to require it only when starting from incentive compatible mecha- nisms at which interim utilities are transferable (in a weak sense). Adding other axioms in the spirit of Kalai's (Econometrica, 1977, Theorem 1) classical character- ization of the egalitarian principle under complete information, I obtain a partial characterization of a natural extension of the lex-min solution to problems with incomplete information. Next, I prove that, in each social choice problem, there is a unique way of rescaling the participants' interim utilities so as to make this solu- tion compatible with the ex-ante utilitarian principle. These two criteria coincides in the rescaled utilities exactly at the incentive ecient mechanisms that maxi- mize Harsanyi and Selten's (Management Science, 1972) weighted Nash product. These concepts are illustrated on classical examples of profit-sharing, public good production and bilateral trade. The richness of the topic of social choice under in- complete information is illustrated by considering two alternative extensions of the egalitarian principle { one based on an idea of equity from the point of view of the individuals themselves (given their private information) instead of an uninformed third party (social planner or arbitrator), and another notion based on the idea of

Choice of Tax Base Revisited: Cash Flow vs. Prepayment Approaches to Consumption Taxation

This paper re-examines the issues involved in the design of a direct tax on consumption, an idea that has received a fair degree of acceptance in the transition countries over the past decade (e.g., tax reforms in Croatia and Moldova). First we argue that on the subject of equivalence among a set of taxes, the only meaningful comparison is along the ex-ante concept of equivalence, and not ex-post. The latter as we shall see requires highly implausible, and often arbitrary, choice scenarios. We carry out the analysis in a variety of models starting with the two-period consumption-saving choice under full certainty. However, a good part of the discussion is carried out where the portfolio choice behaviour is embedded in an intertemporal savings model that has been widely discussed in the literature. We then take up more complete (and necessarily more complex) choice situations for examination. Indeed the first of two variations of the above is a model where individuals make work-leisure (for a given skill level) as well as the safe-risky asset choice. The last is of risky human capital choice, where the physical investment is restricted to a single non-risky asset. For the purposes of the paper, the models are very general, and the precise choice context is open to wider interpretations than how they are actually phrased. In spite of our preoccupation with the efficiency aspects, we are interested in other important issues of equity, and those of an administrative nature. But our remarks on the latter fronts are limited to the insight that we directly gain from the analytics.tax reform in transition countries, cash-flow tax, prepayment tax, ex-ante and ex-post equity, risk sharing, and tax reform