The Trade-Off between Equality and Efficiency
利用1976年微观数据，模拟评估了类似现行税收转移系统的政策在减少收入不平等时的边际成本，发现即使劳动供给弹性较小，边际成本也相当高。
This paper uses a 1976 microdata base to estimate the marginal cost of reducing income inequality with a policy that has distributional effects similar to the present tax-transfer system. The analysis uses a simulation methodology in which only the labor supply effects are evaluated; other behavioral effects are ignored. The most striking finding is that marginal cost is quite high even for modest labor supply elasticities. For example, in the benchmark case with a weighted-average economy-wide uncompensated wage elasticity of 0.2 (and compensated elasticity of 0.31), the disposable money income of upper-income quintiles of households is depressed by 9.51 for each dollar increase in the disposable money income of lower-income quintiles. When income equivalent values that take account of the value of leisure are compared, the marginal cost for this case is estimated to be 3.49.