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Are User Fees Really Regressive?

Author

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  • George Economides
  • Apostolis Philippopoulos

Abstract

This paper studies the aggregate and distributional implications of introducing user fees for publicly provided excludable public goods into a model with consumption and income taxes. The setup is a neoclassical growth model where agents differ in earnings and second-best policy is chosen by a Ramsey government. Our main result is that the adoption of user fees by the Ramsey government not only increases aggregate efficiency, but it also decreases inequality. This result is in contrast to common view and policy practice.

Suggested Citation

  • George Economides & Apostolis Philippopoulos, 2012. "Are User Fees Really Regressive?," CESifo Working Paper Series 3875, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_3875
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    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp3875.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. George Economides & Dimitris Papageorgiou & Apostolis Philippopoulos & Vanghelis Vassilatos, 2013. "Smaller Public Sectors in the Euro Area: Aggregate and Distributional Implications," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 59(3), pages 536-558, September.
    2. Breyer, Friedrich & Sterba, Maj-Britt, 2024. "Are taxes or user-fees more popular among politicians? The case of childcare," Working Papers 24, University of Konstanz, Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality. Perceptions, Participation and Policies".
    3. Economides, George & Philippopoulos, Apostolis & Sakkas, Stelios, 2017. "Tuition fees: User prices and private incentives," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 91-103.
    4. George Economides & Anastasios Rizos, 2018. "Optimal Taxation and the Tradeoff Between Efficiency and Redistribution," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 10(1), pages 1-43, January.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    user fees; Ramsey taxation; efficiency; inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General

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