Welfare and Efficiency in Public Economics

Hans-Werner Sinn, Munich, West Germany This book contains 15 papers presented at a conference in Neresheim, West Ger many, in June 1986. The articles were selected by anonymous referees and most of them have undergone substantial revisions since their presentation. The common topic is measurement of welfare, both from efficiency and from equity perspectives. For many economists, welfare is a diffuse, arbitrary and am biguous concept. The papers collected in this book show that this view is not justified. Though not beyond all doubt, welfare theory today is crisp and clear, offering fairly straightforward measuring concepts. It even comes up with numbers that measure society's advantage or disadvantage from specific policy options in monetary units. Politicians get something they can intuitively understand and argue with, and they do not have to be afraid that all this is metaphysics or the result of the scientist's personal value judgements. Some economists, whom I would classify as belonging to the "everything is optimal" school, would claim that providing politicians with numerical welfare measures is superfluous or even dangerous. The world is as it is, and any attempt to give policy advice can only make things worse. I do not share this view. There are good policies and there are bad ones, but it may not be easy to distinguish between them. There is a role for consulting politicians, Dr.

Autorentext
Dr. Manfred Rose ist Professor für Finanzwissenschaft an der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Forschungsschwerpunkt: Entwicklung eines neuen Steuersystems, das sich optimal mit den Funktionsprinzipien einer Marktwirtschaft und Demokratie verträgt. Seit Anfang 1990 unterstützt er im Rahmen von Entwicklungshilfeprojekten des Bundesentwicklungsministeriums zahlreiche Finanzministerien osteuropäischer Staaten bei der Neugestaltung ihrer Steuersysteme. Er ist Träger des Ernst-Blickle-Preises 1996.

Klappentext

This book contains 15 selected and revised papers presented at a conference in Neresheim, West Germany, in June 1986. Prof. H.W. Sinn writes in his introduction to the book: "The common topic is measurement of welfare, both from efficiency and from equity perspectives. For many economists, welfare is a diffuse, arbitrary and ambiguous concept. The papers collected in this book show that this view is not justified. Though not beyond all doubt, welfare theory today is crisp and clear, offering fairly straightforward measuring concepts. It even comes up with numbers that measure society's advantage or disadvantage from specific policy options in monetary units. Politicians get something they can intuitively understand and argue with, and they do not have to be afraid that all this is metaphysics or the result of the scientist's personal value judgements. Some economists, whom I would classify as belonging to the "everything is optimal" school, would claim that providing politicians with numerical welfare measures is superfluous or even dangerous. The world is as it is, and any attempt to give policy advice can only make things worse. I do not share this view. There are good policies and there are bad ones, but it may not be easy to distinguish between them. There is a role for consulting politicians, Dr. Pangloss, or do you go shopping without thinking because you believe whatever you are going to buy is what you wanted anyway? Certainly, everyone knows that political decision processes are not all that rational and that there is a lot of slack in the public sector. This does not imply, however, that no attempt should be made to bring a bit more rationality and objectivity into public policy debates. Measurement of welfare helps to do that."

Inhalt
A. Welfare and Efficiency Measures General Aspects.- Applied Welfare Economics and Frisch's Conjecture 1.- A Reconsideration of Debreu's Coefficient of Resource Utilization.- Measuring Welfare Changes in Quantity Constrained Regimes.- Poverty Measurement: A Survey.- Poverty Measures, Inequality and Decomposability.- B. Computing Welfare Effects of Fiscal Policy Programmes in an Applied General Equilibrium Setting.- An Introduction to Applied General Equilibrium Tax Modelling (With a Preliminary Application to the Reform of Factor Taxes in the FRG).- Incidence Effects of Changing the German Income Tax Rate Schedule.- Income Tax Reduction and the Quantification of Welfare Gains An Applied General Equilibrium Analysis.- C. Welfare and Efficiency of Selected Fiscal Policy Measures.- C.1 Taxation.- On the Evaluation of Tax Systems.- Comprehensive versus Neutral Income Taxation.- Neutral Taxation of Risky Investment.- C.2 Public Expenditures.- On Measuring the Welfare Cost of Public Expenditure: A Simple General Equilibrium Approach.- C.3 Privatization of Public Enterprises.- Welfare Effects of Privatizing Public Enterprises.- C.4 Environmental Policies.- Measuring Environmental Benefits: A Comparison of Hedonic Technique and Contingent Valuation.- Economic Impact of Emission Standards: A Computational Approach to Waste Water Treatment in Western Europe.- Addresses of Authors.