IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/1065.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Should The Samuelson Rule Be Modified To Account For The Marginal Cost Of Public Funds?

Author

Listed:
  • Dan Usher

    (Department of Economics, Queen's University)

Abstract

Disputes over the marginal cost of public funds may be about its magnitude in any given time and place or about its role in cost-benefit analysis. This paper is about the latter. The Samuelson rule was devised for an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent government. This paper is about how the Samuelson rule should be modified to take account of the impact upon total deadweight loss in the tax system from the required an increase in the tax rate to finance public projects as well as from the appearance of the projects themselves. A very simple device is employed to analyze these questions.

Suggested Citation

  • Dan Usher, 2006. "Should The Samuelson Rule Be Modified To Account For The Marginal Cost Of Public Funds?," Working Paper 1065, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1065
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/qed_wp_1065.pdf
    File Function: First version 2006
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harry F. Campbell, 1975. "Deadweight Loss and Commodity Taxation in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 8(3), pages 441-447, August.
    2. Boadway, Robin & Keen, Michael, 1993. "Public Goods, Self-Selection and Optimal Income Taxation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 34(3), pages 463-478, August.
    3. Browning, Edgar K, 1976. "The Marginal Cost of Public Funds," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(2), pages 283-298, April.
    4. Diamond, Peter A & Mirrlees, James A, 1971. "Optimal Taxation and Public Production: I--Production Efficiency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 8-27, March.
    5. Kaplow, Louis, 1998. "A Note on the Optimal Supply of Public Goods and the Distortionary Cost of Taxation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 51(n. 1), pages 117-25, March.
    6. Kaplow, Louis, 1998. "A Note on the Optimal Supply of Public Goods and the Distortionary Cost of Taxation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 51(1), pages 117-125, March.
    7. Peter A. Diamond & J. A. Mirrlees, 1968. "Optimal Taxation and Public Production," Working papers 22, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    8. Liu, Liqun, 2003. "A marginal cost of funds approach to multi-period public project evaluation: implications for the social discount rate," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(7-8), pages 1707-1718, August.
    9. Mayshar, Joram, 1991. "On Measuring the Marginal Cost of Funds Analytically," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1329-1335, December.
    10. Liqun Liu, 2004. "The Marginal Cost of Funds and the Shadow Prices of Public Sector Inputs and Outputs," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 11(1), pages 17-29, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dan Usher, 2006. "The Marginal Cost of Public Funds Is the Ratio of Mean Income to Median Income," Public Finance Review, , vol. 34(6), pages 687-711, November.

    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. Mickaël Beaud & Thierry Blayac & Patrice Bougette & Soufiane Khoudmi & Philippe Mahenc & Stéphane Mussard, 2013. "Estimation du coût d'opportunité des fonds publics pour l'économie française," Working Papers halshs-01077141, HAL.
    2. Liqun Liu, 2004. "The Marginal Cost of Funds and the Shadow Prices of Public Sector Inputs and Outputs," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 11(1), pages 17-29, January.
    3. Liqun Liu, 2006. "Combining Distributional Weights and the Marginal Cost of Funds," Public Finance Review, , vol. 34(1), pages 60-79, January.
    4. Warlters, Michael & Auriol, Emmanuelle, 2005. "The marginal cost of public funds in Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3679, The World Bank.
    5. Bjart Holtsmark, 2019. "Is the marginal cost of public funds equal to one?," Discussion Papers 893, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    6. Dan Usher, 2006. "The Marginal Cost of Public Funds Is the Ratio of Mean Income to Median Income," Public Finance Review, , vol. 34(6), pages 687-711, November.
    7. Auriol, Emmanuelle & Warlters, Michael, 2012. "The marginal cost of public funds and tax reform in Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 58-72.
    8. Ming Chung Chang & Shufen Wu, 2011. "Should Marginal Cost of Public Funds include the Revenue Effect?," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 147(I), pages 1-16, March.
    9. James E. Anderson & Will Martin, 2011. "Costs of Taxation and Benefits of Public Goods with Multiple Taxes and Goods," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 13(2), pages 289-309, April.
    10. Martin Hellwig, 2004. "Optimal Income Taxation, Public-Goods Provision and Public-Sector Pricing: A Contribution to the Foundations of Public Economics," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2004_14, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    11. Robin Boadway, 1998. "The Mirrlees Approach to the Theory of Economic Policy," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 5(1), pages 67-81, February.
    12. Will Martin & James E. Anderson, 2005. "Costs of Taxation and the Benefits of Public Goods: The Role of Income Effects," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 617, Boston College Department of Economics.
    13. Liqun Liu & Andrew J. Rettenmaier & Thomas R. Saving, 2004. "A Generalized Approach to Multigeneration Project Evaluation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(2), pages 377-396, October.
    14. 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.
    15. Bas Jacobs, 2018. "The marginal cost of public funds is one at the optimal tax system," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(4), pages 883-912, August.
    16. Liqun Liu, 2005. "The Multi-Period Cost-Benefit Rule with Mobile Capital and Distorted Labor," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 12(2), pages 145-158, March.
    17. Bas Jacobs, 2010. "The Marginal Cost of Public Funds is One," CESifo Working Paper Series 3250, CESifo.
    18. Spencer Bastani, 2023. "The Marginal Cost of Public Funds: A Brief Guide," CESifo Working Paper Series 10322, CESifo.
    19. Liqun Liu & Andrew J. Rettenmaier & Thomas R. Saving, 2005. "Discounting according to Output Type," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(1), pages 213-223, July.
    20. Tim Besley & Rohini Pande, 1998. "Read my lips: the political economy of information transmission," IFS Working Papers W98/13, Institute for Fiscal Studies.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Samuelson rule; Marginal cost of public funds; Shadow price of public expenditure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate

    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:qed:wpaper:1065. 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: Mark Babcock (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.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.