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Efficient Welfare Weights
Hendren, Nathaniel - 2014
How should we measure economic efficiency? The canonical measure is an unweighted sum of willingnesses to pay. In … contrast, this paper provides efficient welfare weights that implement the Kaldor-Hicks tests for efficiency but account for ….5-2x more than surplus to the rich. I illustrate how to use these weights to evaluate the efficiency of government policy …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012458316
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Optimal Income Taxation
Kaplow, Louis - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2022
This article explores subjects in optimal income taxation characterized by recent research interest, practical importance in light of concerns about inequality, potential for misunderstanding, and prospects for advancement. Throughout, the analysis highlights paths for further investigation....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013334417
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Three Criteria for Evaluating Social Programs
García García-Menéndez, Jorge Luis; Heckman, James J. - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2022
This paper examines the economic foundations of three criteria used for evaluating the costs and benefits of social programs. Some criteria do not consider the scale of programs or address the costs associated with programs that expand or contract the total government budget. A recent addition...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013388863
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Inequality and Measured Growth
Oberfield, Ezra - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2023
Compared to a half-century ago, inequality in the United states has risen and measured productivity growth has fallen. Concerns about rising inequality have been exacerbated by the observation that prices of goods consumed by the poor have risen faster than prices of goods consumed by the rich....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014248014
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A Unified Perspective on Efficiency, Redistribution, and Public Policy
Kaplow, Louis - 2020
Specialized theoretical and empirical research should in principle be embedded in a unified framework that identifies the relevant interactions among different phenomena, enables an appropriate matching of policy instruments to objectives, and grounds normative analysis in individuals' utilities...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012479207
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A Soul's View of the Optimal Population Problem
De la Croix, David; Doepke, Matthias - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2021
A long-standing challenge for welfare economics is to develop welfare criteria that can be applied to allocations with different population levels. Such a criterion is essential to resolve the optimal population problem, i.e., the tradeoff between population size and the welfare of each person...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012496107
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Addressing the COVID-19 Pandemic : Comparing Alternative Value Frameworks
Ferranna, Maddalena; Sevilla, J. P.; Bloom, David E. - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced countries to make difficult ethical choices, e.g., how to balance public health and socioeconomic activity and whom to prioritize in allocating vaccines or other scarce medical resources. We discuss the implications of benefit-cost analysis, utilitarianism, and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012496155
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Credible Social Planning under Uncertainty
Manski, Charles F. - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2023
Economists have long studied policy choice by a social planner who aims to maximize welfare in democracies or other political systems where, in some sense, welfare is intended to express the well-being of a society rather than the personal preferences of a dictator. The motivation for studying...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014322843
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Allocating Scarce Information
Holden, Richard T.; Malani, Anup; Teh, Chris - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2022
Sender conveys scarce information to a number of receivers to maximize the sum of receiver payoffs. Each receiver's payoff depends on the state of the world and an action she takes. The optimal action is state contingent. Under mild regularity conditions, we show that the payoff of each receiver...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013172145
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Tax and Education Policy in a Heterogeneous Agent Economy : What Levels of Redistribution Maximize Growth and Efficiency?
Benabou, Roland - 1999
for missing credit and insurance markets. The resulting tradeoffs for growth and efficiency are explored, both … to higher income growth than taxes and transfers, but at the cost of lower insurance. Overall efficiency is assessed … welfare function, does not reward equality per se. Simulations using empirical parameter estimates show that the efficiency …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012471662