Distributional Weights in Cost-Benefit Analysis--Should We Forget about Them?
研究质疑了在成本效益分析中使用分配权重会导致巨大效率损失的观点，发现许多情况下使用分配权重是次优最优的，例如当不同提供的商品每美元支出对税收收入影响相同时。
<i>Many argue that it is socially inefficient to use distributional weights in cost-benefit analysis, and that doing so implies large inefficiency losses, when distributional matters can be dealt with trough income taxation, instead. Our results question this view, by showing a large range of cases when distributional weights are (second-best) optimal to use. One example is when different provided goods affect tax-revenues equally per dollar spent; utility functions that are separable in the provided goods is sufficient for this. Most results hold for linear and non-linear income taxes and whether they are optimal or not. General policy implications are discussed.</i>