[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/nhheco/2012_003.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Tax policy and fair inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Cappelen, Alexander W.

    (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)

  • Tungodden, Bertil

    (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)

Abstract
The standard economic approach to tax policy has to a large extent relied on welfarist theories of justice, in particular the utilitarian view that the government should try to maximize the sum of individual welfare. This welfarist framework has proved a productive point of departure for much economic analysis, but it has an important limitation in its inability to take into account considerations of personal responsibility. Welfarist theories evaluate policies solely on the basis of their consequences for individual welfare, and thus do not assign any intrinsic importance to how a specific situation came about.

Suggested Citation

  • Cappelen, Alexander W. & Tungodden, Bertil, 2012. "Tax policy and fair inequality," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 3/2012, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2012_003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nhh.no/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2finstitutter%2fsam%2fDiscussion+papers%2f2012%2f03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bossert W., 1996. "Redistribution mechanisms based on individual characteristics," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 51-51, February.
    2. repec:dau:papers:123456789/1552 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Roemer, John E. & Aaberge, Rolf & Colombino, Ugo & Fritzell, Johan & Jenkins, Stephen P. & Lefranc, Arnaud & Marx, Ive & Page, Marianne & Pommer, Evert & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 2003. "To what extent do fiscal regimes equalize opportunities for income acquisition among citizens?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 539-565, March.
    4. François Bourguignon & Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Marta Menéndez, 2007. "Inequality Of Opportunity In Brazil," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(4), pages 585-618, December.
    5. Fleurbaey, Marc, 2012. "Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199653591.
    6. Wulf Gaertner & Lars Schwettmann, 2007. "Equity, Responsibility and the Cultural Dimension," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(296), pages 627-649, November.
    7. Konow, James, 1996. "A positive theory of economic fairness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 13-35, October.
    8. Alexander W. Cappelen & Astri Drange Hole & Erik Ø Sørensen & Bertil Tungodden, 2007. "The Pluralism of Fairness Ideals: An Experimental Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 818-827, June.
    9. James Konow, 2000. "Fair Shares: Accountability and Cognitive Dissonance in Allocation Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 1072-1091, September.
    10. Roemer, John E. & Aaberge, Rolf & Colombino, Ugo & Fritzell, Johan & Jenkins, Stephen P. & Lefranc, Arnaud & Marx, Ive & Page, Marianne & Pommer, Evert & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 2003. "To what extent do fiscal regimes equalize opportunities for income acquisition among citizens?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 539-565, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Meran Georg & von Hirschhausen Christian, 2017. "Increasing Block Tariffs in the Water Sector – An Interpretation in Terms of Social Preferences," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(3), pages 1-24, July.
    2. Jun Wen & Mingbo Zheng & Gen-Fu Feng & Sunwu Winfred Chen & Chun-Ping Chang, 2018. "Corruption And Innovation: Linear And Nonlinear Investigations Of Oecd Countries," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 65(01), pages 103-129, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Almås, Ingvild & Cappelen, Alexander W. & Lind, Jo Thori & Sørensen, Erik Ø. & Tungodden, Bertil, 2011. "Measuring unfair (in)equality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 488-499.
    2. Marc Fleurbaey & Vito Peragine, 2013. "Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Equality of Opportunity," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 80(317), pages 118-130, January.
    3. Aitor Calo-Blanco & J. García-Pérez, 2014. "On the welfare loss caused by inequality of opportunity," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(2), pages 221-237, June.
    4. John E. Roemer & Alain Trannoy, 2013. "Equality of Opportunity," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1921, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    5. Erik Figueiredo & José Silva Netto Junior, 2014. "More equal but not so fair: an analysis of Brazilian income distribution from 1995 to 2009," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 1325-1337, June.
    6. Alexander W. Cappelen & Bertil Tungodden, 2017. "Fairness and the proportionality principle," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(3), pages 709-719, December.
    7. Lefranc, Arnaud & Pistolesi, Nicolas & Trannoy, Alain, 2009. "Equality of opportunity and luck: Definitions and testable conditions, with an application to income in France," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1189-1207, December.
    8. Marrero,Gustavo Alberto & Rodríguez,Juan Gabriel & Van Der Weide,Roy, 2021. "Does Race and Gender Inequality Impact Income Growth ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9865, The World Bank.
    9. Benjamin Ouvrard & Stefan Ambec & Arnaud Reynaud & Stéphane Cezera & Murudaiah Shivamurthy, 2022. "Sharing rules for a common-pool resource in a lab experiment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(3), pages 605-635, October.
    10. Gill, David & Stone, Rebecca, 2015. "Desert and inequity aversion in teams," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 42-54.
    11. Pilar García‐Gómez & Erik Schokkaert & Tom Van Ourti & Teresa Bago d'Uva, 2015. "Inequity in the Face of Death," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(10), pages 1348-1367, October.
    12. Vito Peragine & Flaviana Palmisano & Paolo Brunori, 2014. "Economic Growth and Equality of Opportunity," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 247-281.
    13. Niehues, Judith & Peichl, Andreas, 2011. "Lower and Upper Bounds of Unfair Inequality: Theory and Evidence for Germany and the US," IZA Discussion Papers 5834, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Jean-François Carpantier & Christelle Sapata, 2013. "An Ex-Post View of Inequality of Opportunity in France and its Regions," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 281-311, September.
    15. Ingvild Almås & Alexander W. Cappelen & Bertil Tungodden, 2020. "Cutthroat Capitalism versus Cuddly Socialism: Are Americans More Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking than Scandinavians?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(5), pages 1753-1788.
    16. Judith Niehues & Andreas Peichl, 2012. "Bounds of Unfair Inequality of Opportunity: Theory and Evidence for Germany and the US," CESifo Working Paper Series 3815, CESifo.
    17. Jacquet, Laurence & Van de Gaer, Dirk, 2011. "A comparison of optimal tax policies when compensation or responsibility matter," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(11), pages 1248-1262.
    18. ANDREOLI Francesco & HAVNES Tarjei & LEFRANC Arnaud, 2014. "Equalization of opportunity: Definitions, implementable conditions and application to early-childhood policy evaluation," LISER Working Paper Series 2014-12, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    19. X. Ramos & D. Van De Gaer, 2012. "Empirical Approaches to Inequality of Opportunity: Principles, Measures, and Evidence," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 12/792, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    20. Sayaka Sakoda, 2022. "Estimating economic unfairness in Japan and policies toward fairness," International Journal of Economic Policy Studies, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 85-111, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tax policy; Income inequality; Fairness.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hhs:nhheco:2012_003. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Karen Reed-Larsen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sonhhno.html .

    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.