Christian Seidl

Stefan Traub

Kirill Pogorelskiy

​This is the first book that performs international and intertemporal comparisons of uniform tax progression with empirical data. While conventional measures of tax progression suffer from serious disadvantages for empirical analyses, this book extends uniform measures to progression comparisons of countries with different income distributions. Tax progression is analyzed in terms of Lorenz curve and Suits curve equivalents of net incomes and taxes. The authors derive six distinct definitions of the relation "is more progressive than", which are then utilized for an empirical analysis of 13 countries included in the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). In two thirds of all international comparisons of tax progression, the authors report a clear ranking of the respective countries in terms of progression dominance. Tax based definitions of greater progressivity perform best. These observations are yet reinforced by statistical tests. The book also provides an account of the institutional background of the involved countries in order to facilitate the interpretation of the data. Moreover, the authors conduct intertemporal comparisons of tax progression for selected countries and perform a sensitivity analysis with respect to the parameterization of the equivalence scale.

An Integrative Analysis of Tax Schedules and Income Distributions

Tax Progression in OECD Countries

Peter Hammond

Salvador Barbera

The standard rationality hypothesis is that behaviour can be represented as the maximization of a suitably restricted utility function. This hypothesis lies at the heart of a large body of recent work in economics, of course, but also in political science, ethics, and other major branches of the social sciences. Though this hypothesis of utility maximization deserves our continued respect, finding further refinements and developing new critiques remain areas of active research. In fact, many fundamental conceptual problems remain unsettled. Where others have been resolved, their resolutions may be too recent to have achieved widespread understanding among social scientists. Last but not least, a growing number of papers attempt to challenge the rationality hypothesis head on, at least in its more orthodox formulation. The main purpose of this Handbook is to make more widely available some recent developments in the area. Yet we are well aware that the final chapter of a handbook like this can never be written as long as the area of research remains active, as is certainly the case with utility theory. The editors originally selected a list of topics that seemed ripe enough at the time that the book was planned. Then they invited contributions from researchers whose work had come to their attention. So the list of topics and contributors is largely the editors' responsibility, although some potential con tributors did decline our invitation. Each chapter has also been refereed, and often significantly revised in the light of the referees' remarks.

Volume 2 Extensions

Handbook of Utility Theory

Ulrich U. Schmidt

Competition, welfare, and competition policy / Kotaro Suzumura -- In what sense is the Nash solution fair? / Walter Trockel -- Utility invariance in non-cooperative games / Peter J. Hammond -- Compensated demand and inverse demand functions : a duality approach / Susanne Fuchs-Seliger -- Shadow prices for a nonconvex public technology in the presence of private constant returns / John W. Weymark -- A glance at some fundamental public economics issues through a parametric lens / Christos Koulovatianos -- Rent seeking in public procurement / Dieter Bös, Martin Kolmar -- A new subjective approach to equivalence scales : an empirical investigation / Carsten Schröder, Ulrich Schmidt -- Utility independence in health profiles : an empirical study / Ana M. Guerrero, Carmen Herrero -- Constructing a preference-oriented index of environmental quality / Michael Ahlheim, Oliver Frör -- Measuring and evaluating intergenerational mobility : evidence from students' questionnaires / Michele Bernasconi, Valentino Dardanoni -- Equity, fiscal equalization, and fiscal mobility / Stefan Traub -- Comparing theories : what are we looking for? / John Hey -- Overbidding in first price private value auctions revisited : implications of a multi-unit auctions experiment / Veronika Grimm, Dirk Engelmann -- Modelling judgmental forecasts under tabular and graphical data presentation formats / Otwin Becker et al. -- Understanding conjunction fallacies : an evidence theory model of representativeness / Hans Wolfgang Brachinger -- The riskless utility mapping of expected utility and all theories imposing the dominance principle / Robin Pope.

A Festschrift for Christian Seidl

Advances in Public Economics: Utility, Choice and Welfare

Nobel laureate Sir John Hicks has with good reason called the third quarter of the 1 twentieth century the age of Keynes • Sir John nevertheless diagnosed a crisis of Keynesian economics even before this period had expired. But if only a few gifted scholars had foreseen the crisis of Keynesian economics before 1975, this year at least marked the ultimate disenchantment of Keynesian economics. Keynesian economic policy proved ineffective to cope with the economic challenges of the late seventies: unemployment, inflation, and stagnation of economic growth. Alarmed governments resorted to more and more intense remedies out of the Keynesian box of Pandora. But all they got was the creation of additional difficulties, aggravating the situation still more: soaring public debt, extraordinary balance-of-payments deficits, and economic instability. It had been argued until quite recently that capi talism could have survived only "in the oxygen tent of government deficit spend 2 ing ". But it has become patent since the mid-seventies that it is first and foremost the Keynesian oxygen tent that has produced the present embarrassment of capital ist economies. The present economic malaise in nearly all Western countries has accordingly led to considerable unrest in the economics profession. Somewhat reminiscent of the thirties, a feverish search for alternatives to the prevailing but insufficient econ omic doctrine has begun. Among the candidates to be screened, Schumpeterian economics takes a prominent place.

Schumpeter Centenary Memorial Lectures, Graz 1983

Lectures on Schumpeterian Economics

D. Bös

M. Rose

Progressive Besteuerung kann nicht nur als ein Instrument zur Optimie rung einer sozialen Wohlfahrtsfunktion gesehen werden, sondern auch als Ergebnis einer Minimierung bestimmter negativer Querbeziehungen von Menschen zueinander. Diese Deutung einer progressiven Einkommen steuer bietet eine alternative Erklarung des Umverteilungsstaates. Hierbei ist das Menschenbild des Einzelnen dtisterer als das der neo klassischen Tradition. Wird doch implizit angenommen, daB es ftir den Einzelnen nicht erwtinscht sei, wenn andere in einer Position sind, die er lieber hatte. Aber, woher kommt eigentlich dieser bias der Neoklas sik, daB sie einseitig egozentrische Menschen in ihrem Menschenbild der Praferenzrelationen akzeptiert, daB sie auch noch bereit ist, alt ruistische Menschen anzunehmen, aber eine psychologische Erscheinung wie den Neid verdrangen mochte? Moglicherweise liegt der Grund darin, daB man ein gewisses AusmaB an Nejd als leistungserhohende Triebkraft eines Menschen ansieht, also sogar positiv zu bewerten bereit ist. Dies andert aber nichts daran, daB zunehmender Neid die noch naher zu erklarende "Supernutzenfunktion" der einzelnen Individuen in einer Gesellschaft reduziert, so daB auch eine Gesellschaft mit hohem Sozial produkt, aber sehr intensiven Neidbeziehungen insgesamt wohlfahrtsmaBig ungtinstiger dastehen kann als eine mit niedrigerem Sozialprodukt, aber Reduzierung der Neidbeziehungen.

Christian Seidl

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