Responsibility and Redistribution: The Case of First Best Taxation

20 Pages Posted: 22 Aug 2001

See all articles by Bertil Tungodden

Bertil Tungodden

Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) - Department of Economics

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Date Written: August 2001

Abstract

It is not straightforward to define the ethics of responsibility in cases where the consequences of changes in factors within our control are partly determined by factors beyond our control. In this paper, we suggest that one plausible view is to keep us responsible for the parts of the consequences that are independent of the factors beyond our control. Within the framework of a first best taxation problem, we present and characterise a redistributive mechanism that both satisfies this interpretation of the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of compensation within a broad class of economic environments. However, on a general basis, even this weaker version of the ethics of responsibility is not compatible with the ethics of compensation, and we report an impossibility result that clarifies the source of this conflict.

Keywords: Redistribution, Responsibility, Compensation

JEL Classification: D63, D71, D31, I32

Suggested Citation

Tungodden, Bertil, Responsibility and Redistribution: The Case of First Best Taxation (August 2001). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=280880 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.280880

Bertil Tungodden (Contact Author)

Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) - Department of Economics ( email )

Helleveien 30
N-5035 Bergen
Norway

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