This paper has two main aims. First, the poor targeting of a policy of zero-rating food in a goods and services tax (GST) is illustrated in a simple model where the revenue lost from zero-rating food is instead devoted to a universal transfer payment, with a larger effect on progressivity....

This paper examines the discounting of money values in social evaluations using 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 a growth rate). It is shown that this procedure can give a different...

This paper is concerned with the use of social welfare functions in evaluating changes. In particular, it considers suggestions that welfare weights to be used in comparing the gains and losses of different individuals (or other appropriate units of analysis), and a social time preference rate...