English Marginalism

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The Effects on New Zealand Households of an Increase in The Petrol Excise Tax

This paper reports estimates of the potential welfare effects of hypothetical increases in the petrol excise tax in New Zealand. Equivalent variations, for a range of household types and total expenditure levels, are obtained along with distributional measures. Household demand responses are modelled using the Linear Expenditure System, where parameters vary by total expenditure level and household type. The effects on inequality were founds to be negligible, but the marginal excess burdens typically ranged between 35 and 55 cents per dollar of additional revenue.Excise tax; equivalent variation; inequality; petrol demand

Ursula Hicks: My Early Life (Up to The Age of 12)

Ursula Hicks (nee Webb) is well known for her contributions to public finance and development economics, and in her role as founding editor of Review of Economic Studies. After a brief introduction to Ursula Hicks’s complex family background, this paper reproduces, with editorial material, the autobiographical sketch of her early life in Dublin. This sketch, written late in her life, is of considerable interest,not only for the light it shows on her own background, but for the glimpse it gives of life in Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. In particular, there is much discussion of the wide circle of the Religious Society of Friends, more generally known as Quakers,which played such a large part in the life of her family.

Inequality, mobility and income distribution comparisons

This paper examines the relationship between the cross-sectional and lifetime income distributions using a simple model of relative income mobility. It asks whether cross-sectional comparisons between countries can provide a good indication of lifetime inequality differences if income mobility is similar, and whether lifetime inequality increases by less than cross-sectional inequality if the latter increases as a result of higher mobility. Analytical and simulation methods are used to show that the answer to both questions is negative. Comparisons must allow for different types of mobility, the nature of the age-income profile and the age distribution in each country.

Income Tax Revenue: Some Simple Analytics

This paper takes familiar analytical expressoins for total income tax revenue, expressed in terms of summary measures of thee distribution of taxable income, and relates them to distances and slopes in the popular Lorenz curve diagram.

Indirect tax reform and the role of exemptions

This paper examines the question of whether indirect tax rates should be uniform, using four different modelling strategies. First, marginal tax reform is examined. This is concerned with the optimal direction of small changes in effective indirect tax rates and requires considerably less information than the calculation of optimal rates. Second, the welfare effects of a partial shift from the current indirect tax system in Australia towards a goods and services tax (GST) are considered, with particular emphasis on differences between household types and the role of exemptions. Third, in view of the stress on a distributional role for exemptions of certain goods from a GST, the potential limits to such redistribution are considered. The fourth approach examines the extent of horizontal inequity and reranking that can arise when there are non-uniform tax rates. These inequities arise essentially because of preference heterogeneity.

The Excess Burden of Taxation and Why it (Approximately) Quadruples When the Tax Rate Doubles

The 'excess burden' of taxation represents an efficiency loss which must be compared with any perceived gains arising either from income redistribution or the non-transfer expenditure carried out by the government. An important property is that, under certain assumptions, it increases disproportionately with the tax rate. This result provides the basis of a general presumption in favour of a broad-based and low tax rate system: any exemptions which reduce the tax base inevitably raise the tax rate required to obtain anunchanged amount of total tax revenue. The aims of this paper are to provide a nontechnical explanation of the concepts of welfare change and excess burden used in the public finance literature, and to demonstrate the result that an approximation to thisburden depends on the square of the tax rate.Taxation; excess burden; equivalent variation; compensating variation

Reflections on the Tax Working Group Report

This article reviews the Report of the Tax Working Group of the Victoria University of Wellington, which included individuals from the Treasury and the Inland Revenue Department, as well as from the business community. The Report makes an important contribution to the tax policy debate in New Zealand by setting out the reasons for reform, the basic principles used to consider alternative policies, and the advantages and disadvantages of a range of reform proposals. The purpose of this review of the Report is not to discuss the proposals and recommendations in detail, but to consider a number of aspects concerning the evaluation of tax structures and to try to clarify some arguments which are not stated explicitly in the Report. An indication of useful next steps is also given.

Survey Reweighting for Tax Microsimulation Modelling

This paper describes a range of ‘minimum distance’ methods used to compute new weights for large cross-sectional surveys used in microsimulation modelling. Extraneous information about a range of population variables is used for calibration purposes. An iterative solution procedure is described and numerical examples are given, involving comparisons among alternative distance functions. An application to the New Zealand Household Economic Survey (HES) is reported.Household surveys; calibration; survey weights

Discounting and the Social Time Preference Rate

This paper shows that the emphasis on a social time preference rate (defined as the sum of a pure time preference rate and the product of the elasticity of marginal valuation and the growth rate) in social evaluations where money values are discounted using the social time preference rate, is not advisable. It can give an entirely different, and arbitrary, ranking of alternative streams compared with the direct use of the pure time preference rate to discount ‘social welfare’ in each period (where social welfare is a — usually isoelastic — function of money values).