structural changes in the uk energy market abstract energy use in the uk has undergone substantial structural changes since the rapid rise in the price of oil in 1979 this paper traces the effect of the second round of oil price increases on the adoption of effective energy saving methods in industry and in private households in the uk the analysis shows the largest decrease of energy consumption occurred in industry which is both the most energy intensive as well as the most sensitive to energy prices

a note on the estimation of the equity efficiency trade off for qalys abstract in this note the veil of ignorance approach is tested as a basis for empirically determining the shape of the social welfare function for qalys an experiment is carried out where the participants choose between different societies that differ with respect to per capita qalys and the distribution of qalys the answers are analyzed using logistic regression analysis according to the results the respondents are willing to give up 1 qaly in the group with more qalys to gain 0 45 qalys in the group with fewer qalys but this trade off is independent of the size of the difference in qalys between the groups

theories of justice and their implications for priority setting in health care abstract the paper aims to show how three theories of distributive justice utilitarianism egalitarianism and maximin can provide a clearer understanding of the normative basis of different priority setting regimes in the health service the paper starts with a brief presentation of the theories followed by their prescriptions for distribution as illustrated with their respective preferred points on a utility possibility frontier after this general discussion attention is shifted from utils to health the paper discusses how the recent norwegian guidelines for priority setting can be understood in the light of the theories

marginal income tax rates in the united states a non parametric approach abstract the objective of this paper is to estimate both the u s federal marginal income tax rate and the state and local marginal income tax rates we use the non parametric regression method and data on income and tax extracted from u s individual tax model files for the period 1985 1995 the flexibility of the non parametric approach and the information at the individual level enable us to construct a more reliable time series of the average federal marginal income tax rates and that of the average state and local marginal income tax rates our results suggest that the average federal marginal income tax rate varies from 18 2 to 21 8 and the average state and local marginal income tax rate varies from 4 7 to 5 6 we also find that the state and local income tax accounts for roughly 18 of the total income taxes paid during 1985 1995 moreover our analysis shows that stephenson journal of monetary economics 41 1998 pp 389 409 provides the most consistent tax rate series for use in applications that require estimates of tax rates for years prior to 1985

average marginal tax rates revisited abstract i revise and update through 1994 the estimated average marginal income and social security tax rates of seater 1982 marginal federal personal and corporate income tax rates in the us 1909 1975 journal of monetary economics 10 361 381 seater 1985 on the construction of marginal federal personal and social security tax rates in the us journal of monetary economics 15 121 135 and barro and sahasakul 1983 measuring the average marginal tax rate from the individual income tax journal of business 56 419 452 and barro and sahasakul 1986 average marginal tax rates on social security and the individual income tax journal of business 59 555 566 and i introduce a return weighted social security tax rate since 1981 the average marginal effective income tax rate has declined from about 16 to 12 however the combined federal tax burden remains high by historic standards because the average marginal social security tax rate has increased from about 5 to about 6 5

marginal federal personal and corporate income tax rates in the u s 1909 1975 abstract in this article i first report and describe the construction of two new statistical series on the marginal federal income tax rates for corporations and private individuals in the united states since the inception of those taxes and then analyze the behavior of these series over time several results on the determination of tax rates are derived these generally are not consistent with barro s theory of deficit finance

pattern of uk fuel use abstract this paper provides an analysis of the historical development of the uk primary energy market more specifically of coal gas and heavy fuel oil the period considered for this investigation is 1960 83 a theoretical framework is set up and the significant shifts in the market are traced accordingly as it turns out the shifts in the energy market of the uk have been similar to those in other european countries despite indigenous oil and gas resources

inequality aversion health inequalities and health achievement this paper addresses two issues the first is how health inequalities can be measured in such a way as to take into account policymakers attitudes towards inequality the gini coefficient and the related concentration index embody one particular set of value judgements by generalising these indices alternative sets of value judgements can be reflected the other issue addressed is how information on health inequality can be used together with information on the mean of the relevant distribution to obtain an overall measure of health achievement

environmental policies market responses and incentives abstract environmental degradation cannot be cured by relying solely on the public sector debating and introducing policies and control to prompt the market to develop the technology for reducing emission there has to be a more tangible evidence of an economic gain and a much higher return than currently prevails for new investment there is a tendency within industry to favour revenue generation projects against those for cost reduction by requiring shorter gestation and payback periods for the latter even though the former is the dual of the latter thus energy efficiency projects tend to receive low priorities by industry by requiring much higher return and faster payback periods for them sometimes as low as three months it is possible that a supply shock may need to occur to induce the market to invest and develop the required technology in order to redress some of the current environmental imbalance

theory measurement and calibration of macroeconomic models abstract calibration has become a standard tool of macroeconomics this paper extends and refines the calibration methodology along several important dimensions first accounting for home production is important both in measuring calibration targets and in organizing the data in a model consistent fashion for this reason thinking about home production is important even if the model under consideration does not include home production second investment specific technological change is included because of its strong balanced growth parameter restrictions third the measurement strategy is laid out as transparently as possible so that others can easily replicate the underlying calculations the data and calculations used in this paper are available at http clevelandfed org research models rbc index cfm

costs of taxation and the size of government existing theory on the form of government suggests that a parliamentary system promotes a larger size of government than does a presidential system this paper extends the existing theory by allowing for distortionary taxation a main result is that if taxation is sufficiently distortionary the parliamentary system may promote a smaller size of government than the presidential system the proposed mechanism appears consistent with several empirical patterns in the data that cannot be explained by other theories

determining the parameters in a social welfare function using stated preference data an application to health one way in which economists might determine how best to balance the competing objectives of efficiency and equity is to specify a social welfare function swf this paper looks at how the stated preferences of a sample of the general public can be used to estimate the shape of the swf in the domain of health benefits the results suggest that it is possible to determine the parameters in a social welfare function from stated preference data but show that people are sensitive to what inequalities exist and to the groups across which those inequalities exist

fertility and the personal exemption comment one of the most commonly cited studies on the effect of child subsidies on fertility whittington alm and peters 1990 claimed a large positive effect of child tax benefits on fertility using time series methods we revisit this question in light of recent increases in child tax benefits by replicating this earlier study and extending the analysis we do not find strong evidence to justify the model specification from the original paper moreover even if the original specification is appropriate we show that the results are not robust to more general measures of child tax benefits jel h24 j13

health inequality and non monotonicity of the health related social welfare function in a recent paper in this journal abasolo and tsuchiya abasolo i tsuchiya a 2004 exploring social welfare functions and violation of monotonicity an example from inequalities in health journal of health economics 23 313 329 have strongly argued for the use of a non monotonic health related social welfare function this note discusses both the limitations of the measure proposed by abasolo and tsuchiya abasolo i tsuchiya a 2004 exploring social welfare functions and violation of monotonicity an example from inequalities in health journal of health economics 23 313 329 and the problems associated with their empirics we are able to show how non monotonicity may lead to paradoxical results and policies further we examine the empirics of abasolo and tsuchiya abasolo i tsuchiya a 2004 exploring social welfare functions and violation of monotonicity an example from inequalities in health journal of health economics 23 313 329 and provide an alternative explanation to the observed patterns in the data that do not violate monotonicity finally we briefly mention why the atkinson sen framework may be more appropriate as a way forward

average marginal tax rates from social security and the individual income tax we extend previous estimates of the average marginal tax rate from the federal individual income tax to include social security our computations consider the tax rates on employers employees and the self employed the income that accrues to persons with earnings below the ceiling and the effective deductibility of employers social security contributions from workers taxable income the next effect of social security on the average marginal tax rate is below 02 until 1966 but then rises to 03 in 1968 04 in 1973 05 in 1974 06 in 1979 and 07 in 1982 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

average marginal tax rates in the uk economy using a known methodology this paper calculates the average tax rate atr and three different average marginal tax rate amtr measures for the uk the three different amtr measures are greater than the atr in the same year because of the progressive tax system in the uk barro s amtr measure weighted by total income is greater than barro s amtr measure weighted by number of returns because of the unequal distribution of income and barro s amtr measure weighted by total income exceeds seater s amtr measure because total income before tax in seater s amtr measure is greater than total income after tax in barro s amtr measure

health inequality and non monotonicity of the health related social welfare function a rejoinder this rejoinder demonstrates that the arguments made in at 2006 are not robust and the case against non monotonic hrswf and their empirics remain overwhelming

nonlinear growth effects of taxation a semi parametric approach using average marginal tax rates summary one of the major challenges of empirical tax research is the identification and calculation of appropriate tax data while there is consensus that average marginal tax rates are most suitable for studying the effects of tax policy on economic growth because of data limitations the calculation of marginal tax rates has been limited to the usa and the uk this paper provides calculations of average marginal tax rates for the four scandinavian countries using the methodologies of seater 1982 1985 and barro and sahasakul 1983 1986 then by pooling the newly calculated tax rates for the scandinavian countries with the data for the usa and the uk we investigate the effects of tax policy shocks on the per capita gdp growth rate our results suggest that an increase in average marginal tax rates has a negative impact on economic growth employing additive mixed panel models with penalized splines as estimation approach we show that changes in tax rates have nonlinear effects increasing average marginal tax rates turn out to be the most distorting at relatively moderate tax rates copyright 2013 john wiley sons ltd

is past prologue prospects for state and local sales tax bases general sales taxes provide substantial fractions of state and local revenues in the us however state and local sales tax bases have been eroding steadily during the past 50 years base erosion contributes to fiscal stress in the states therefore prospects for continued sales tax base erosion are important to state tax administrators policymakers and public finance economists this article offers a quantitative assessment of base erosion we construct time series of a representative state sales tax base and its price index and estimate a structural demand system for taxed and untaxed commodities we use the estimates to forecast the sales tax base over coming years time series forecasts and a weighted average forecast are constructed to reduce the likelihood of forecast error the results suggest slow but relentless base erosion and possible recurring fiscal stress in states where sales tax revenues make up sizable fractions of total tax revenues

qalys and the equity efficiency trade off as the volume of research on quality adjusted life years qalys has increased concern has begun to be expressed about the equity aspects of resource allocation decisions based on the results of this research this paper suggests that a common theme running through the criticisms of the qaly approach is a concern about inequality it also suggests that the method for incorporating distributional concerns which is currently being pursued by advocates of the qaly approach will only ever capture concerns other than a concern about inequality the paper suggests a method for incorporating both sets of concerns into resource allocation decisions

exploring social welfare functions and violation of monotonicity an example from inequalities in health the social welfare function swf has been used within the economics literature to study trade offs between equality and efficiency these swfs are characterised by properties determined by traditional welfare economics one of these properties the monotonicity principle is explored in this paper in the context of health there may be occasions when the monotonicity principle is violated as there may be circumstances where distributional issues dominate efficiency concerns when this is the case conventional swfs are not flexible enough to represent such social preferences therefore we propose a swf with an alternative specification which is general enough to accommodate preferences that are not necessarily monotonic a survey of the spanish general public was undertaken to estimate preferences regarding equality in health relative to efficiency in health the results with 973 usable responses give strong support to the existence of public preferences which violate the monotonicity principle and thus to the usefulness of the alternative specification proposed here

the measurement of individual utility and social welfare it has been suggested by a number of economists that decisions about how to allocate scarce health care resources should be informed by the cost per quality adjusted life years qalys of the different alternatives one of the criticisms of the qaly approach is that it is based on the measurement of individual utility yet the values elicited are used to inform social choice in this respect it is argued that the qaly approach fails to take account of distributional issues that are known to be important in the context of health care this paper addresses this issue and presents an approach grounded in microeconomic theory that is flexible enough to deal with a wide range of efficiency equity trade offs while making the nature of the trade off transparent in addition it is an approach that is relatively simple to investigate empirically and the results of a preliminary study are presented as illustration of this

the normative economics of health care finance and provision whereas in many countries the crisis in medical care has been seen in terms of excess spending on health services in the uk it has been seen at least by most of those who manage and work in the nhs as a crisis of underfunding this has come about as the result of the government s successful attempts to restrain the rate of growth of real spending on the nhs which in turn reflects the government s belief that its principal effective weapon against what it perceives to be inefficiency in the nhs is to challenge management itself reformed and to some extent liberated by systematic financial squeezes the same concern has given rise to a host of proposals for reform of the nhs most of which involve a much greater role for private insurance private finance of other kinds such as out of pocket payments and private provision of health care itself

on the construction of marginal federal personal and social security tax rates in the u s abstract in this article i correct and extend my earlier series on marginal federal personal income tax rates i also construct a measure of the marginal social security tax rate and add this to the income tax rate to obtain a measure of the effective marginal tax rate on income due to federal taxes finally i compare my series on marginal income tax rates and its method of construction with those of barro and sahasakul

measuring the average marginal tax rate from the individual income tax the economic effects of taxation depend on the configuration of marginal tax rates we consider here the appropriate measure of a marginal tax rate for the federal individual income tax which has a graduated rate structure and allows for numerous legal and illegal deductions from total income our conclusion is that the explicit marginal rate from the tax schedule is the right concept for many purposes hence we construct approximately weighted averages of these marginal tax rates for 1916 80 when weighted by adjusted gross income the arithmetic average of marginal tax rates is 5 in 1920 2 in 1930 6 in 1940 20 in 1950 23 in 1960 24 in 1970 and 30 in 1980 we also discuss the dispersion of marginal tax rates as well as the behavior of average tax rates and deductions from taxable income one noteworthy result concerns the fraction of adjusted gross income that accrues to families that face a marginal tax rate of at least 35 this fraction quadruples from 1964 to 1980 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item