The Marginal Cost of Public Funds: Theory and Applications
Bev Dahlby
Abstract
The marginal cost of public funds (MCF) measures the loss incurred by society in raising additional revenues to finance government spending. The MCF has emerged as one of the most important concepts in public economics; it is a key component in evaluations of tax reforms, public expenditure programs, and other public policies. This book provides a unified treatment of the MCF, carefully developing its theoretical foundations in a variety of contexts and describing its application to a wide range of policies—from excise taxes in Thailand to public sector borrowing in Canada and the United State ... More
The marginal cost of public funds (MCF) measures the loss incurred by society in raising additional revenues to finance government spending. The MCF has emerged as one of the most important concepts in public economics; it is a key component in evaluations of tax reforms, public expenditure programs, and other public policies. This book provides a unified treatment of the MCF, carefully developing its theoretical foundations in a variety of contexts and describing its application to a wide range of policies—from excise taxes in Thailand to public sector borrowing in Canada and the United States. The book develops the basic theory of the MCF within the framework of public economics and shows how it is related to the traditional measures of the efficiency loss from distortionary taxation. The MCF concept is then applied to the major sources of revenues for governments—sales and excise taxes, taxes on labor income, taxes on the return to capital, public sector borrowing, and intergovernmental grants.
Keywords:
marginal costs of public funds,
MCF,
government spending,
public economics,
tax reforms,
public expenditure programs,
excise taxes,
public sector borrowing,
efficiency loss,
distortionary taxation
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2008 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780262042505 |
Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: August 2013 |
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262042505.001.0001 |