This paper examines the methodological issues arising in the measurement of the distributional impact of tax and expenditure policies, with emphasis on the problems related to the measurement of the impact of adjustment programs on the welfare of the poor. Both conceptual and empirical considerations suggest that public expenditures are a more potent instrument for distributional purposes than taxes but are also more difficult to analyze and evaluate. The paper concludes that more research is needed toward a better measurement of expenditure benefits.

This paper examines the methodological issues arising in the measurement of the distributional impact of tax and expenditure policies, with emphasis on the problems related to the measurement of the impact of adjustment programs on the welfare of the poor. Both conceptual and empirical considerations suggest that public expenditures are a more potent instrument for distributional purposes than taxes but are also more difficult to analyze and evaluate. The paper concludes that more research is needed toward a better measurement of expenditure benefits.

This book focuses on the distributional consequences of the public sector and examines and documents, theoretically and empirically, the effects of government spending and taxation on personal distribution, and includes chapters investigating the relationship between the public sector and functional distribution of national income.

The fifteen authors and five commentators include current and former members of the Office of Tax Analysis, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the Congressional Budget Office, lending an authority to this discussion of tax distributional tables, their methodology, and consideration for improvement. The analysis outlines the attitudes and problems in the current distributional tax methods, innovations in the JCT distribution, the use of generational accounting, transfer systems, and lifetime taxpayer profiles. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

It is commonly agreed that economic policies, including budgetary policies, can have potentially strong distributional effects. Traditional economic analysis held that economic policies affected the income distribution primarily through their impact on the rate of growth. More recently, it has come to be recognized that qualitative aspects of economic growth are probably more important than the rate of growth itself. While recent research has confirmed the potential role of expenditure policies as a redistributive tool, it has also shown that redistribution does not necessarily have to come at the expense of economic growth and efficiency. Although there are substantial analytical and technical problems to be faced in the design of equitable and cost-effective public expenditure programs, unfavorable distributional outcomes of these programs can usually be traced more to political and institutional pressures than to purely technical factors.