IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/cbsnow/2004_005.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring Tax Efficiency

Author

Listed:
  • Raimondos-Møller, Pascalis

    (Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School)

  • Woodland, Alan D.

    (Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School)

Abstract

This paper introduces an index of tax optimality that measures the distance of some current tax structure from the optimal tax structure in the presence of public goods. In doing so, we derive a [0, 1] number that reveals immediately how far the current tax configuration is from the optimal one and, thereby, the degree of efficiency of a tax system. We call this number the Tax Optimality Index. We show how the basic method can be altered in order to derive a revenue equivalent uniform tax, which measures the size of the public sector. A numerical example is used to illustrate the method developed.

Suggested Citation

  • Raimondos-Møller, Pascalis & Woodland, Alan D., 2006. "Measuring Tax Efficiency," Working Papers 05-2004, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:cbsnow:2004_005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://openarchive.cbs.dk/cbsweb/handle/10398/7534
    Download Restriction: Full text not avaiable
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James E. Anderson & J. Peter Neary, 1996. "A New Approach to Evaluating Trade Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(1), pages 107-125.
    2. Auerbach, Alan J., 1985. "The theory of excess burden and optimal taxation," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 61-127, Elsevier.
    3. J. Peter Neary, 2004. "Rationalizing the Penn World Table: True Multilateral Indices for International Comparisons of Real Income," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1411-1428, December.
    4. Nancy H. Chau & Rolf F”re & Shawna Grosskopf, 2003. "Trade restrictiveness and efficiency," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(3), pages 1079-1095, August.
    5. Diamond, P. A. & McFadden, D. L., 1974. "Some uses of the expenditure function in public finance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 3-21, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Raimondos-Moller, Pascalis & Woodland, Alan D., 2006. "Measuring tax efficiency: A tax optimality index," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(10-11), pages 1903-1922, November.
    2. Gaspar, Ví­tor & Afonso, António, 2006. "Excess burden and the cost of inefficiency in public services provision," Working Paper Series 601, European Central Bank.
    3. J. Peter Neary, 2006. "Measuring Competitiveness," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 37(2), pages 197-213.
    4. Dieckhoener, Caroline & Hecking, Harald, 2012. "Greenhouse Gas Abatement Cost Curves of the Residential Heating Market – a Microeconomic Approach," EWI Working Papers 2012-16, Energiewirtschaftliches Institut an der Universitaet zu Koeln (EWI).
    5. Charles L. Ballard & Don Fullerton, 1992. "Distortionary Taxes and the Provision of Public Goods," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 117-131, Summer.
    6. Nan, Gehuang D., 1995. "An energy Btu tax alternative," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 291-305, November.
    7. Liqun Liu & Andrew J. Rettenmaier, 2004. "The Excess Burden of the Social Security Payroll Tax," Public Finance Review, , vol. 32(6), pages 631-650, November.
    8. John Creedy, 2003. "The Excess Burden of Taxation and Why it (Approximately) Quadruples When the Tax Rate Doubles," Treasury Working Paper Series 03/29, New Zealand Treasury.
    9. Chris Jones, 2005. "Why the Marginal Social Cost of Funds is not the Shadow Value of Government Revenue," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2005-449, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    10. Kevin J. Mumford, 2007. "The Optimal Tax Treatment of Families with Children," Discussion Papers 06-020, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    11. Maria Cipollina & Luca Salvatici, 2008. "Measuring Protection: Mission Impossible?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(3), pages 577-616, July.
    12. Nancy H. Chau & Rolf Färe & Shawna Grosskopf, 2013. "Trade Restrictiveness and Pollution," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 15(1), pages 25-52, February.
    13. Helmuth Cremer & Firouz Gahvari, 1999. "Excise Tax Evasion, Tax Revenue, and Welfare," Public Finance Review, , vol. 27(1), pages 77-95, January.
    14. Jeffrey Reimer & Sang Kang, 2010. "Estimation of trade and domestic distortions: an application to world agriculture," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 257-265, December.
    15. Don Fullerton, 1989. "If Labor is Inelastic, Are Taxes Still Distorting?," NBER Working Papers 2810, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Barnett, William A. & Erwin Diewert, W. & Zellner, Arnold, 2011. "Introduction to measurement with theory," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 161(1), pages 1-5, March.
    17. Claude Hillinger, 2002. "A General Theory of Price and Quantity Aggregation and Welfare Measurement," CESifo Working Paper Series 818, CESifo.
    18. Redding, Stephen J. & Weinstein, David E., 2016. "A unified approach to estimating demand and welfare," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67681, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Antonio Ciccone & Marek Jarociński, 2010. "Determinants of Economic Growth: Will Data Tell?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 222-246, October.
    20. Sanstad, Alan H. & DeCanio, Stephen J. & Boyd, Gale A. & Koomey, Jonathan G., 2001. "Estimating bounds on the economy-wide effects of the CEF policy scenarios," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(14), pages 1299-1311, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tax optimality index; excess burden; distance function;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    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:cbsnow:2004_005. 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: CBS Library Research Registration Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/incbsdk.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.