Excess Burden and the Voluntary Theory of Public Finance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9720867 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Donald B Johnson (0000-0002-9098-4423), David B Johnson (0009-0004-9000-1791), Mark V Pauly (0000-0003-4957-4825) |
| Year | 1969 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 143 |
| Pages | 269 |
| Publication date | 1969-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Economica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0427 • E-ISSN: 1468-0335 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2551807 |
| OpenAlex | W2062650529 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 3 |
The voluntary theory of public finance, originally suggested by Wicksell and Lindahl, and recently clarified and extended by Samuelson, Buchanan, and others, postulates the voter-taxpayer as the basic decisionmaking unit.2 The voter is considered to be demanding, with his vote, marginal quantities of public goods whose to him is represented by the marginal tax he pays. This view of a tax as the paid for public goods was perhaps fostered by Samuelson's seminal analysis, which uses what amounts to a two-good (one public, one private) model. In such a model, taxes are similar to prices. Amounts of the private good given up in order to pay for each unit of the public good represent the price of that good to the voter-taxpayer. These taxes are, in effect, lump-sum or head levies that the individual levies upon himself or has levied on him because of his desire for another unit of the public good.3 In a similar sense, the of a unit of a private good is like a lump-sum tax that the individual incurs because of his desire for a unit of that good. A paid for a private good, or a lump-sum tax used to finance a public good is efficient in the sense that neither causes an alteration in the individual's behaviour other than the surrender of the required amount of income. In the real world, however, taxes are not usually of a lump-sum, price-like nature. Instead, government expenditures are
Discounting · Economics · Lump sum · Macroeconomics · Marginal utility · Microeconomics · Order (exchange) · Political science · Private good · Public economics · Public finance · Public good · Surrender · Taxpayer · Tiebout model · Unit (ring theory) · Finance · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth · Law · Legal and Constitutional Studies
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,12 |
| Citation span | 1975 - 2016 (42) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |