how much damage will climate change do recent estimates two reasons to be concerned about climate change are its unjust distributional impact and its negative aggregate effect on economic growth and welfare although our knowledge of the impact of climate change is incomplete and uncertain economic valuation is difficult and controversial and the effect of other developments on the impacts of climate change is largely speculative the authors find that poorer countries and people are more vulnerable than are richer countries and people a modest global warming is likely to have a net negative effect on poor countries in hot climates but may have a net positive effect on rich countries in temperate climates if one counts dollars the world aggregate may be positive if one counts people the world aggregate is probably negative negative impacts would become more negative and positive impacts would turn negative for more substantial warming the marginal costs of carbon dioxide emissions are uncertain and sensitive to assumptions that partially reflect ethical positions but are unlikely to be larger than 50 per tonne carbon

centralized versus decentralized provision of local public goods a political economy approach abstract this paper takes a fresh look at the trade off between centralized and decentralized provision of local public goods it argues that the sharing of the costs of local public spending in a centralized system will create a conflict of interest between citizens in different jurisdictions when spending decisions are made by a legislature of locally elected representatives this conflict of interest will play out in the legislature depending on precisely how the legislature behaves the result may be excessive public spending or allocations of public goods characterized by uncertainty and misallocation across districts the extent of the conflict of interest between districts is affected by spillovers and differences in tastes for public spending thus the relative performance of centralized and decentralized systems depends upon spillovers and differences in tastes for public spending but for different reasons than suggested in the existing literature

the effect of cohort size on earnings growth a reexamination of the evidence this study reexamines the effect of cohort size on earnings growth finis welch finds that individuals in larger cohorts experience depressed earnings conditions on entry into the labor market but that their earnings grow at faster rates than in smaller cohorts thus a large portion of the cohort size effect on earnings dissipates after a few years however using data almost identical to those of welch but estimating less restrictive models it is found here that cohort size not only depresses earnings at entry but also seems to slow down early career earnings growth the evidence suggests that earnings ini larger cohorts do not approach normal levels after at brief period in the labor force rather the negative cohort size effect on earnings appears to worsen with experience

determinants of economic well being among u s farm operator households participation in government programs has a mild impact on the economic well being of u s farm households major factors that determine farm household prosperity are the primary operator s education level and ethnicity education level of the spouse and other characteristics such as forward purchasing of inputs use of contract shipping of products having a succession plan farm ownership and location in a metro area this article uses the 2001 agricultural resource management survey arms as well as relative and an absolute measure to assess u s farm households economic well being the relative measure compares the income and wealth position of farm households relative to median income and median wealth of the general population the absolute measure adds annualized wealth to a farm household s income

pricing and congestion economic principles relevant to pricing roads u k expenditures on roads or road costs average l4 34 billion per year from the 24 6 million vehicles registered road taxes of l12 7 billion were collected 2 9 times road costs from 1978 88 the average daily traffic on each km of road rose by 34 percent with a consequent serious increase in congestion road space is a valuable and scarce resource and road users should logically pay the marginal social cost if they are to make efficient transport and location decisions the paper estimates these costs and the appropriate charges for britain and identifies the major policy issues total road charges ignoring hard to quantify accident costs should yield l13 8 billion of which congestion charges would be l12 8 billion though close to road taxes in total amount replacing current taxes by road pricing would reduce congestion improve public transport and avoid perverse consequences from road expansion copyright 1990 by oxford university press

distributional and efficiency impacts of increased us gasoline taxes we examine the impacts of increased us gasoline taxes in a model that links the markets for new used and scrapped vehicles and recognizes the consider able heterogeneity among households and cars household choice parameters derive from an estimation procedure that integrates individual choices for car ownership and miles traveled we find that each cent per gallon increase in the price of gasoline reduces the equilibrium gasoline consumption by about 0 2

marginal tax reform externalities and income distribution the paper examines welfare improving and revenue neutral directions marginal policy reforms for an economy with nonidentical individuals and an externality that has a feedback effect on the consumption of taxed goods it considers three types of policy instruments the indirect taxes the uniform poll transfer and public abatement this extends the framework set up by ahmad and stern 1984 bovenberg and de mooij 1994 and schob 1996 the theoretical model is illustrated for a specific externality namely congestion caused by peak car transport

environmental policy public finance and the labour market in a second best world abstract environmental and tax policies and the optimal provision of clean and dirty public goods are analysed within the context of a second best framework of optimal taxation households consume both clean and dirty commodities degradation of the natural environment occurs due to the consumption of dirty private and public goods but can be offset when the government engages in abatement activities increased environmental concern implies a higher dirt tax a lower tax on labour less employment more public abatement and a cleaner environment if the elasticity of substitution between private consumption commodities and leisure is large and that between clean and dirty goods is small public consumption may expand while private consumption contracts otherwise public consumption falls

traffic and crime abstract we study the link between crime and extreme traffic congestion to estimate the psychological costs of traffic our empirical analysis combines police incident reports with observations of local traffic data in los angeles from 2011 to 2015 this rich dataset allows us to link traffic with criminal activity at a fine spatial and temporal dimension our identification relies on deviations from normal traffic to isolate the impact of abnormally high traffic on crime we find that extreme traffic increases the incidence of domestic violence a crime shown to be affected by emotional cues but not other crimes the result is robust to a variety of specifications and falsification tests the results represent a lower bound of the psychological costs of traffic congestion since most drivers stuck in traffic do not commit domestic violence but still bear some emotional costs

on the measurement and trend of inequality reply john formby terry seaks and w smith hereafter fss argue that the p gini coefficient is affected by the arbitrary choice of the age grouping to a degree which brings the validity of the age related measure into question fss 1989 p 2 more pointedly with a sufficiently narrow age partition the p curve can always be driven to the l curve convergence of the p gini to a nonzero estimate does not occur p 4 these conclusions i believe result from a misapplication of gastwirth s theorem on disaggregation and a failure to observe statistical rules relating to sample size and sampling error i will show that when these rules are observed the value of the p gini does not converge to zero but properly reflects the relative importance of the nonlife cycle factors affecting the distribution when calculating the traditional l gini the more disaggregation the better the number and accuracy of the sample points are the only consideration since all are thrown into one conceptual box and compared in terms of income size but if we try to identify the factors which account for income inequality in terms of age versus nonage related factors we are setting up two conceptual boxes the age gini and the p gini and we are no longer simply dealing with a gastwirth type problem statistical considerations come into play for example we must have a sufficient number of sample points in each conceptual box in order to give a reliable estimate of the importance of each factor the key allocating device which i employ is the age gini derived from the average age income profile the age gini shows the amount of inequality that would exist if all nonage related sources of inequality were eliminated when calculating this coefficient the means of the age groups are used in order to wash out all random and nonagerelated influences but this separating device works well only if the means are based on large samples otherwise sampling errors create spurious variation and impart an upward bias to the value of the age gini fss p 4 drive the age gini value up to the l gini by increasing the number of agegroups until they equal the number in the sample since the means of the age groups are now based on samples of one they become as erratic as the individual incomes and impart the maximum upward bias to the age gini it is true that the age income profile and the age gini are conceptually refined by using smaller age intervals but unless sample size is large compared to the number of age intervals the gains from conceptual purification will be more than offset by the greater sampling errors of the age means this kind of limitation is shared by many other statistical measures which do not thereby lose their validity or usefulness under what conditions will the true or limiting value of the p gini emerge fss in their footnote 3 state that there is no limiting value other than zero let us test this claim assume we have a scatter diagram of income y and age x and wish to show average income in relation to age we start with a finite number of age groups and plot their mean incomes on the diagram by continuously reducing the age interval and increasing sample size we end up with a curve passing through the true means of infinitely small age intervals this defines the average age income profile since for each person we have data on income and age we can with this curve or an approximation of it calculate the age gini and l gini without grouping for age or income the age income curve allows us to determine the mean income u at any given age and for all persons department of economics portland state university p o box 751 portland or 97207

majority rule directions of income tax reform and second best optimality two kinds of directional reforms of a linear income tax system are studied in this article first income tax reform is studied from the perspective of a planner interested in obtaining a second best optimum necessary and sufficient conditions for the existing tax parameters to be a local second best optimum are obtained in addition for nonoptimal tax schedules the set of pareto improving production efficiency preserving directions of tax reform are characterized second majority rule directions of income tax reform are considered a complete characterization of the changes in the values of the tax parameters that would be predicted to result from a majority vote over directions of tax reform is provided

discounting and distributional considerations in the context of global warming the economics of global warming is reviewed with special emphasis on how the cost depends on the discount rate and on how costs in poor and rich regions are aggregated into a global cost estimate both of these factors depend on the assumptions made concerning the underlying utility and welfare functions it is common to aggregate welfare gains and losses across generations and countries as if the utility of money were constant but it is not if we assume that a e co2 equivalent dlubling implies costs equal to 1 5 of the income in both high and low income countries a pure rate of time preference equal to zero and a utility function which is logarithmic in income then the marginal cost of co2 emissions is estimated at 260 590 usd ton c for a time horizon in the range 300 1000 years an estimate which is large enough to justify significant reductions of co2 emissions on purely economic grounds the estimate is approximately 50 100 times larger than the estimate made by nordhaus in his dice model and the difference is almost completely due to the choice of discount rate and the weight given to the costs in the developing world as well as a more accurate model of the carbon cycle finally the sensitivity of the marginal cost estimate with respect to several parameters is analyzed

the social cost of carbon and its policy implications the shadow price or social cost of carbon is an important indicator of the global incremental damage done by emitting greenhouse gases today cost benefit analysis would set the optimal amount of greenhouse gas emission reduction at the point where this social cost just equals the incremental cost of controlling emissions the higher the value for the social cost of carbon the more control is warranted this comparison assumes that cost benefit analysis is the correct way of determining climate change policy and many believe this is not the case because of the very long term irreversible and potentially catastrophic nature of global warming but in the short run at least a comparison of cost and benefits is required and in any event all decisions imply costs and benefits but what is the right figure for the social cost of carbon this paper reviews the uk government s assessment of the cost and concludes that it has been set far too high because of a misreading of the integrated assessment models used to balance costs and benefits moreover adoption of the uk government s shadow price would have formidable implications for energy policy in the uk and for policies on afforestation copyright 2003 oxford university press

second best congestion pricing the case of an untolled alternative abstract this paper deals with second best one route congestion pricing in case of an untolled alternative using a two link network simulation model the effects of various demand and cost parameters on the relative efficiency of one route tolling are analyzed it is investigated whether the existence of costs of congestion charging may be a reason for one route tolling to be more overall efficient than two route tolling finally the efficiency of revenue maximizing one route and two route tolling is discussed

does britain or the united states have the right gasoline tax this paper develops an analytical framework to assess the second best optimal level of gasoline taxation taking into account unpriced pollution congestion and accident externalities as well as interactions with the broader fiscal system we provide calculations of the optimal taxes for the us and the uk under a variety of parameter scenarios under our central parameter values the second best optimal gasoline tax is 1 01 gal for the us and 1 34 gal for the uk current tax rates are much lower than this in the us and higher in the uk the calculations are moderately sensitive to alternative parameter assumptions the congestion externality is the largest component in both nations revenue raising needs also play a significant role as do accident externalities and local air pollution potential welfare gains from reducing the current uk tax rate are estimated at nearly one fourth the production cost of all gasoline used in the uk even larger gains could be achieved by switching to a tax on vehicle miles with equal revenue yield for the us the welfare gains from optimizing the gasoline tax are smaller but those from switching to an optimal tax on vehicle miles are very large

a political economy model of road pricing abstract in this paper we use a simple majority voting model to study the introduction of urban congestion tolls the model allows for different types of uncertainty and considers different uses of the toll revenues the following results are obtained first we show that individual uncertainty with respect to modal substitution costs may imply that a majority votes against road pricing ex ante although a majority would have been in favor after its introduction ex post moreover if a majority is against road pricing ex ante there will also be no majority for organizing an experiment that would take away the individual uncertainty second political uncertainty with respect to the use of the revenues corroborates the finding that ex ante more voters will be against the introduction of tolls third both types of uncertainty suggest that fewer voters are against road pricing when toll revenues are used to subsidize public transport than when they are redistributed to all voters importantly the results of this paper are consistent with a number of recent empirical observations on efforts to introduce road pricing including the systematic rejection of road pricing in referenda the more favorable attitudes towards road pricing after than before its introduction and tying the toll revenues to support public transport

comparing the efficiency of alternative policies for reducing traffic congestion abstract this paper compares the efficiency of a single lane toll a uniform congestion tax across freeway lanes a gasoline tax and a transit fare subsidy at reducing congestion there are three conditions for an efficient outcome relating to travel across modes across peak and off peak periods and sorting out drivers with high and low time costs across faster and slower freeway lanes each policy involves some inefficiency indeed the single lane toll gasoline tax and transit subsidy forego at least two thirds of the efficiency gains under an ideal congestion tax that varies across lanes however the uniform congestion tax achieves over 90 of these gains

household adjustment to gasoline price change an analysis using 9 years of us survey data this paper examines the dynamics and composition of household adjustment to changes in the real price of gasoline using a panel of us households by decomposing the demand for gasoline into the demand for vehicle miles traveled and the demand for household composite miles per gallon we are able to add rich detail to the description of how households respond to gasoline price changes while obtaining total price elasticity estimates well within the range found in the literature we find that consumers initially respond to a price rise with a much larger decrease in consumption than would be indicated by the total elasticity in addition households respond to price changes by adjusting vehicle miles traveled more than composite miles per gallon in the year after a price change

the theory of reform and indian indirect taxes abstract given a set of value judgements an initial state and a model of the economy one can ask whether some feasible tax change would increase welfare we do this by defining the marginal cost in terms of welfare of raising an extra rupee from the i th good the inverse optimum problem is the calculation of non negative welfare weights on households which imply that the initial state is optimum if no such welfare weights exist then a pareto improvement is possible we illustrate the concepts and results using data from the indian economy for 1979 1980 directions of tax reform for a number of specific social welfare functions and for pareto improvements are presented

income and wealth inequality and the life cycle a non parametric analysis for china this paper uses the techniques of non parametric density and regression estimation to estimate the chinese age income and age wealth distributions using survey data relating to 1987 although there is evidence of a clear life cycle profile of income earning and wealth accumulation the results suggest that only a small part of observed inequality can be explained by life cycle factors this finding contradicts the results of some other researchers

tax reform from the gradient projection viewpoint abstract this paper examines the problems of gradual tax reform desirable small moves of the tax system are determined using the principles of the well known gradient projection algorithm three classical models of public finance are considered for each of them a continuous time dynamic process is exhibited along which the social welfare function increases until convergence to local second best extrema although the selection of trajectories according to the gradient projection method has some arbitrariness it leads to intuitively and economically appealing rules such as a tax reform analog of the classical optimal taxation result on production efficiency

economists views about parameters values and policies survey results in labor and public economics specialists in labor economics and public economics at 40 leading research universities provided opinions of policy proposals quantitative best estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals for economic parameters and answers to values questions regarding income redistribution efficiency versus equity and individual versus social responsibility their positions on policy are more closely related to their values than to their estimates of relevant economic parameters average best estimates of the economic parameters agree well with the relevant literature but individual best estimates are usually widely dispersed the individual 95 percent confidence intervals are much narrower than the substantial cross respondent variation in estimates would warrant

analysing gasoline demand elasticities a survey this paper is a survey of studies on gasoline demand although there are very many dxerent studies in this eld which sometimes appear to arrive at contradictory results we find that with proper stratification of studies by model and data type much of the contict turns to consensus in this survey we classtfy studies by data type and by ten d erent categories of model and with the exception of estimates on seasonal data which tend to be unstable and of certain inappropriate model formulations we find a fair degree of agreement concerning average short run and even long run income and price elasticities

making mobility visible a graphical device abstract this paper suggests a method of depicting mobility processes of income or earnings it makes use of nonparametric quantile regression based on bivariate kernel density estimation the method is illustrated with a comparison of german and us income mobility

targeted carbon tax reforms abstract in the presence of intersectoral linkages sector specific carbon tax changes can have complex general equilibrium effects in particular a carbon tax on the emissions of a sector can lead to an increase in aggregate emissions we analytically characterise how incremental taxes on the emissions of any set of sectors affect aggregate emissions we show that carbon tax reforms that target sectors based on their position in the production network can achieve a greater reduction in aggregate emissions than reforms that target sectors based on their direct emissions alone we illustrate the effects of carbon tax reforms by calibrating our intersectoral network model to the economies of two countries

optimal taxes and the structure of preferences if optimal tax theory is to be the basis for calculating tax rates a close understanding is required of the relationship between the structure of preferences and the configuration of optimal tax rates otherwise hypotheses chosen by the econometrician for practical convenience may completely determine the results independently of measurement this paper explores the relationship between various types of separability particularly weak and implicit separability and optimal tax rates in the various models discussed in the literature the use of distance functions and the antonelli matrix provides a significant unification of previously disparate results in the final analysis optimal tax theory should be the basis for actual calculation of tax rates although recently there have been great advances in theoretical results and in our understanding of their meaning we are still some way from a working knowledge of whether uniform commodity taxes are in practice optimal or if not which commodities should be discriminated against present theoretical formulae do not yield clear cut results except in special cases and it has recently become clear that optimal rates depend crucially on the detailed structure of consumer preferences for example atkinson and stiglitz 3 show that with an optimal nonlinear income tax discriminatory commodity taxes are only necessary to the extent that individual commodities are not weakly separable from leisure more recently deaton 6 has shown that a similar result holds for what is perhaps the most interesting of the standard models that where there are many consumers and only a linear income tax and proportional commodity taxes are allowed in this case separability between goods and leisure together with linear engel curves for goods removes the need for differential commodity taxation in consequence nothing can be learned about commodity taxes from consumer demand studies in which commodity demands are explained conditionally on total expenditure and commodity prices and which assume linear engel curves all such studies require separability from leisure as a maintained hypothesis and so are consistent with uniform commodity taxation these results suggest that the prospects for meaningful empirical calculations of tax rates are bleak econometricians estimating commodity demand and labor supply equations make generous use of separability assumptions to enable estimation at all in consequence it is likely that empirically calculated tax rates based on econometric estimates of parameters will be determined in structure not by the measurements actually made but by arbitrary untested and even unconscious hypotheses chosen by the econometrician for practical convenience to remedy this situation and as a prelude to fruitful empirical work it is necessary to have a more explicit understanding of how preference structure affects optimal tax rates such is the object of this paper three different

older or wealthier the impact of age adjustment on wealth inequality differences in individual wealth holdings are widely viewed as a driving force of economic inequality however as this finding relies on cross sectional data a concern is that older is confused with wealthier we propose a new method to adjust for age effects in cross sections which eliminates wealth inequality due to age yet preserves inequality arising from other factors using a new cross country comparable database we examine the impact of age adjustments on wealth inequality across countries and over time we find that the most widely used method yields a substantially different picture of age adjusted wealth inequality than our method 2011 the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

optimal environmental taxation in the presence of other taxes general equilibrium analyses this paper examines the optimal setting of environmental taxes in economies where other distortionary taxes are present we employ analytical and numerical models to explore the degree to which in a second best economy optimal environmental tax rates differ from the rates implied by the pigovian principle according to which the optimal tax rate equals the marginal environmental damages both models indicate contrary to what several analysts have suggested that the optimal tax rate on emissions of a given pollutant is generally less than the rate supported by the pigovian principle moreover the optimal rate is lower the larger are the distortions posed by ordinary taxes numerical results indicate that previous studies may have seriously overstated the size of the optimal carbon tax by disregarding pre existing taxes this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

congestion and tax competition in a parallel network the purpose of this paper is to study the effects of tolling road use on a parallel road network where each link can be tolled by a different government using both theoreticaland numericalmo dels the paper analyses the potential tax competition between countries that each maximise the surplus of local users plus tax revenues in controlling local and transit transport three types of tolling systems are considered i toll discrimination between local traffic and transit ii only uniform tolls on local and transit transport are acceptable iii tolls on local users only the results suggest that the welfare effects of introducing transit tolls are large but that differentiation of tolls between local and transit transport as compared to uniform tolls does not yield large welfare differences also the welfare effects of toll cooperation between countries are relatively small in comparison with the welfare gains of non cooperative tolling of transit the numerical model further illustrates the effects of different transit shares and explicitly considers the role of asymmetries between countries higher transit shares strongly raise the transit toll and slightly decrease local tolls with asymmetric demands the welfare gains of introducing differentiated tolling rise strongly for the country with lower local demand

rice prices and income distribution in thailand a non parametric analysis rice is a staple crop in thailand significantly entering both household production and consumption this paper examines the effect of rice prices on the distribution of real income across households taking into account household characteristics and geographical location the data set is a large scale survey of 11 893 households simple nonparametric techniques for regression and density estimation are used these methods depend on few assumptions and generate flexible graphical results that are directly informative about the problem at hand the main results are that higher rice prices should benefit all rural households but the largest benefits accrue to rural households in the middle of the income distribution copyright 1989 by royal economic society

traffic externalities in cities the economics of speed bumps low emission zones and city bypasses abstract this paper considers various policy measures that governments can use to reduce traffic externalities in cities unlike much of the available literature that emphasized congestion we focus on measures that reduce pollution noise and some accident risks these measures include noise barriers speed bumps traffic lights tolls emission standards low emission zones and bypass capacity to guide traffic around the city center using a simple model that distinguishes local and through traffic we study the optimal use of these instruments by an urban government that cares for the welfare of its residents and we compare the results with those preferred by a federal authority that also takes into account the welfare of road users from outside the city our results include the following first compared to the federal social optimum we show that the city government will over invest in externality reducing infrastructure whenever this infrastructure increases the generalized cost of through traffic we can therefore expect an excessive number of speed bumps and traffic lights but the right investment in noise barriers second when implementing low emission zones the urban government will set both the fee for non compliance and the emission standard at a more stringent level than the federal government moreover at sufficiently high levels of through traffic the urban government will prefer imposing a toll instead of implementing a low emission zone third whatever the tolling instruments in place the city will always underinvest in bypass capacity finally if it can toll all roads but is forced to invest all bypass toll revenue in the bypass it will never invest in bypass capacity although the paper focuses on non congestion externalities most insights also hold in the presence of congestion

toward an optimal u s ethanol fuel subsidy abstract enhanced environmental quality fuel security and economic development along with reduced prices of ethanol gasoline blends are often used as justifications for the u s federal excise tax exemption on ethanol fuels however the possible effect of increased overall consumption of fuel in response to lower total price mitigating the environmental and fuel security benefits are generally not considered taking this price response into account the optimal u s ethanol subsidy is derived estimated values of the optimal subsidy reveal that the subsidy s environmental and security benefits are questionable however positive environmental and security benefits from the ethanol tax exemption subsidy may be obtained if the subsidy is combined with an increase in the excise tax on gasoline

comparing alternative policies to reduce traffic accidents abstract this paper derives and implements formulas for the welfare effects of uniform mileage taxes gasoline taxes per mile insurance premiums and mileage taxes differentiated across vehicle and driver groups for reducing the external costs of passenger vehicle accidents the average external accident cost is estimated at 2 2 6 6 cents per mile accidents costs differ substantially across driver groups but only moderately across vehicles groups annual welfare gains from a mileage tax equal to marginal external costs for each driver vehicle group are 9 4 billion in the benchmark case the uniform mileage tax and per mile insurance reform can achieve 76 and 65 of this welfare gain respectively while the gasoline tax can achieve only 28 of the welfare gain unlike other policies the gasoline tax induces costly improvements in average fleet fuel economy that have little effect on reducing external costs

revenue recycling and the welfare effects of road pricing the authors explore the interaction between taxes on work related traffic congestion and preexisting distortionary taxes in the labor market a congestion tax raises the overall costs of commuting to work and discourages labor force participation at the margin when revenues are returned in lump sum transfers the resulting efficiency loss in the labor market can be larger that the pigouvian efficiency gains from internalizing the congestion externality by contrast if congestion tax revenues are used to reduce labor taxes the net impact on the labor supply is positive and the efficiency gain in the labor market can raise the overall welfare gains of the congestion tax by as much as 100 percent recycling congestion tax revenues in public transit subsidies produces a positive but smaller impact on the labor supply in short the authors results indicate that the presence of preexisting tax distortions and the form of revenue recycling can crucially affect the size and possibly even the sign of the welfare effect of road pricing schemes the efficiency gains from recycling congestion tax revenues in other tax reductions can amount to several times the pigouvian welfare gains from congestion reduction

undominated directions of tax reform abstract this article considers the reform of a commodity tax system consumers preferences over directions of tax reform are constructed from indirect utility functions a wicksellian decision procedure is used to define a dominance relation on the set of directions of change direction x dominates direction y if and only if a everybody prefers x to y or b x is the status quo and at least one person prefers x to y a number of characterizations of undominated directions of change are provided a related unanimity rule procedure which does not single out the status quo for special treatment is also considered particular attention is paid to the issue of whether wicksellian reforms preserve production efficiency remarks on the relationship between this work previous work in optimal taxation theory and social choice theory are also provided