Public Goods and the Distribution of Income

37 Pages Posted: 20 Jul 2003 Last revised: 29 Nov 2022

See all articles by Louis Kaplow

Louis Kaplow

Harvard Law School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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Date Written: July 2003

Abstract

This article addresses conceptual issues concerning the distributive incidence of public goods. Solutions depend on the specific purposes for asking the question of distributive incidence notably, assessing the extent to which various public goods should be provided, determining how the provision of public goods affects the desirability of income redistribution, and providing a meaningful description of the distribution of well-being. In the course of the analysis, a simple and intuitive version of the benefit principle of taxation (qualitatively different from those commonly advanced in pertinent literatures) is presented, and some of the problems confronting empirical attempts to measure the distributive incidence of public goods are resolved.

Suggested Citation

Kaplow, Louis, Public Goods and the Distribution of Income (July 2003). NBER Working Paper No. w9842, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=423315

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