TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kaplow,Louis
TI  - Public Goods and the Distribution of Income
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9842
PY  - 2003
Y2  - July 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9842
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9842.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Louis Kaplow
Harvard University
Hauser 322
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-4101
Fax: 617/496-4880
E-Mail: meskridge@law.harvard.edu
AB  - 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.
ER  -