效率标准、所得税与异质性弹性
Efficiency Criteria, Income Taxation, and Heterogeneous Elasticities
American Economic Review · 2026 · [{"name": "John Becko", "affiliation": ["Princeton University", "Princeton Public Schools"]}, {"name": "Andre Sztutman", "affiliation": ["Carnegie Mellon University"]}]
中文摘要
对帕累托有效政策的一种常见解释是：对于偏好的某些基数效用表示，这些政策最大化功利主义福利。我们在所得税情境下表明，这类基数化往往是极端的，要求效用关于消费的曲率无界。当且仅当税收收入在一类狭窄定向的减税中递减且凹时，税收才能在不依赖这些极端基数化的情况下被证成为功利主义的。我们将这一条件重新表述为一个充分统计量检验。只要某一收入水平内部的应税收入弹性过于异质，该检验便不通过；我们论证这在经验上很可能成立。（JEL D81, H21, H23, H24, J22, J31）
Abstract
A common interpretation of Pareto-efficient policies is that, for some cardinal utility representations of preferences, they maximize utilitarian welfare. We show in the context of income taxation that such cardinalizations are often extreme, requiring unbounded curvature of utility with respect to consumption. Taxes can be justified as utilitarian without these extreme cardinalizations if and only if revenues are decreasing and concave in a class of narrowly targeted tax cuts. We reformulate this condition as a sufficient-statistics test. The test fails whenever elasticities of taxable income are too heterogeneous within some income level, as we argue is empirically likely. (JEL D81, H21, H23, H24, J22, J31)
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