Distributive justice in taxation

A classical criterion for apportioning taxes is that all should sacrifice equally in loss of utility. Suppose that a method of apportioning taxes is continuous and has the following four properties: (i) the way that taxpayers split a given tax total depends only on their own taxable incomes; (ii) an increase in the tax total implies that everyone pays more; (iii) every incremental increase in tax is apportioned according to taxpayers' current after-tax incomes; (iv) the ordering of taxpayers by pre-tax income and after-tax income is the same. Then there exists a utility function relative to which all sacrifice equally.     

Macroeconomic stability and economic justice

This paper has benefitted from discussions with Thomas Naylor, Edward Kane, John Westerhof, Walter Benjamin, Loren Eckroth, Forrest Smith and Jane Sheffield.     

Transitional justice and authoritarian backsliding

Constitutional Political Economy - Can a lack of transitional justice contribute to democratic backsliding? This paper uses the case of Poland to argue that selective enforcement of transitional...     

Macroeconomic stability and economic justice

This article presents a proposal to broaden the right to acquire capital with the earnings of capital as a means of promoting sustainable economic recovery and growth. It would open the markets for real and financial capital acquisition more fully and competitively to poor and working people (1) to distribute more broadly the earnings of capital and (2) to profitably employ more capital and labor. Both the recession and the strategies advanced to promote economic recovery may be viewed as responses to the prospect of inadequate present and future earning capacity of both consumers and producers (1) to purchase what can physically be produced and (2) to repay existent and anticipated debt obligations. To increase the prospects of sufficient, sustainable earning capacity, the proposal advanced in this article would extend to all people the same protections and benefits presently provided by government that facilitate market transactions whereby capital is acquired with the earnings of capital primarily for well-capitalized people. Although in theory, all people in a market economy are able to acquire capital with the earnings of capital, reliable empirical data reveal that as a practical matter, the major determinant of the ability of individuals to acquire capital with the earnings of capital is the existing distribution of capital ownership. The theory of “binary” economic growth underlying this proposal holds that the market return on capital is positively related to the distribution of capital acquisition with the earnings of capital. The prospect of a broader distribution of capital acquisition with the earnings of capital carries with it the prospect of more broadly distributed earning capacity in future years, which in turn will provide the market incentives to profitably employ more capital and labor in earlier years. The idea that the broader distribution of capital acquisition with the earnings of capital will promote growth is not found in any of the widely accepted theories and models of economic growth such as those proposed by Schumpeter, Solow, Roemer, and Lucas. By opening to all people the institutions of corporate finance, banking, insurance, government loans and guaranties, and monetary policy (the very institutions presently relied upon by the Federal Government to stimulate the economy) the practical ability to acquire capital with the earnings of capital can be more broadly extended to all people with the result that greatly enhanced prospects for greater and more broadly distributed earning capacity and growth can be reasonably expected and realized by all.     

Hot spots regulation and environmental justice

This paper analyzes whether regulating “hot spots” of toxic air pollution by increasing the spatial resolution of regulation could address environmental justice (EJ) concerns. To examine this question, this paper develops a decision model of a regulator choosing emission controls within a net cost minimizing framework. An empirical application of the model using air toxic emission data for Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties in Florida estimates the emission standards and spatial distribution of risks at a coarse and a finer spatial resolutions. Implications for EJ are analyzed by combining the simulated spatial risk distributions at the two resolutions with the demographic data. Results indicate that different measures of EJ point to different conclusions regarding the question of whether finer resolution regulation alleviates EJ concerns. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for EJ policy.     

Are incentives against economic justice?

We consider the problem of fairly allocating a social endowment of indivisible goods and money when the domain of admissible preferences contains, but is not restricted to, quasi-linear preferences. We analyze the manipulability of the Generalized Money Rawlsian Fair (GMRF) solutions. (i) We show that the Nash and strong Nash equilibrium correspondences of the “preference revelation game form” associated with each GMRF solution coincide with the no-envy solution (in equilibrium, efficiency is preserved according to agents' true preferences). (ii) A corollary is that the GMRF solutions “naturally implement” the no-envy solution in Nash and strong Nash equilibria.     

An empirical approach to distributive justice

This paper starts from the idea that it would be interesting to complement the deductive reasoning about economic justice with an empirical approach which tries to describe and interpret the actual value judgements held by the economic agents. We present results from a pilot study with 180 subjects. Factor analysis indicates that it makes sense to work with desert and compensation criteria, as most economists and philosophers do. We then illustrate that it is possible to operationalise equity judgements, estimating for each subject separately an equation describing his perception of the equitable compensatory income variation. We use the factor analysis results to construct a ‘compensation’ and a ‘desert’ index. All coefficients can be nicely interpreted and interesting patterns of interindividual variation emerge.     

A social economist’s search for justice

Address delivered on October 15, 1992 at Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania. (This lecture was co-sponsored by the University’s College of Commerce and Finance and the Sesquicentenial Committee.)     

On some alternative criteria for justice between generations

This paper is concerned with Rawls' principle of just savings. Both the intergenerational maxi–min solution and the Nash equilibrium are analyzed in the context of a simple growth model and a specific preference structure. The results are compared to the Utilitarian solution. The maxi–min solution is intertemporally inconsistent and all the Nash equilibria are Pareto inefficient. The latter part of the paper analyzes intergenarational strong equilibria, the α-core and the β-core. It is shown that for the model in question the set of strong equilibria is empty, and that both the α- and β-cores are roughly speaking equal to the set of all Pareto efficient programmes of accumulation.     

Issues in environmental justice within the European Union

This paper surveys pressing issues facing current and future social policies in the European Union (EU) at the juncture of social justice demands and environmental concerns. European policy-makers have in fact only recently acknowledged the notions of environmental justice and environmental inequalities, which have been part of the US policy arsenal for almost two decades. Yet, challenges to equality and fairness in the environmental domain are many and growing within the European Union. After having defined environmental justice and environmental inequalities in the European context, the paper addresses two contemporary dimensions of those challenges for EU social policies: vulnerability and exposure to environmental disaster and risk; and fairness in environmental taxation and the related issue of fuel poverty.     

Exploitation,international taxation,and global justice

Abstract

I investigate the central principle that underlies the OECDs tax base erosion and profit shifting initiative. The principle claims that (corporate) profits should be taxed where economic activities deriving the profits are performed and where value is created. First, I argue that its plausibility depends on establishing that states have an entitlement to the productive factors in their territory, and therefore to a share of the value created by employing those factors. Second, I maintain that this cannot presently be established. If states fail to discharge duties requiring wealth redistribution, they do not have an unqualified right to the productive factors in their territory. Even if they are not subject to such duties, states can only legitimately claim a share in the fair value of the goods created. I show that given widespread exploitation in global value chains, the market prices of (intermediary) goods do not reflect their fair value.     

What's the monetary value of distributive justice?

This paper proposes a model that can be implemented to estimate the willingness to pay for distributive justice, defined as distribution according to desert. We derive a formula that allows one to recover the willingness to pay for distributive justice from fiscal data and the estimated coefficients of a probit regression. Using this formula and data from a 1998 Gallup Social Audit, we find that on average the monetary value of justice for US households amounts to about one fifth of their disposable income. Moreover, we find evidence of markedly heterogeneous preferences for justice that differ by race and education.     

Labour markets, social justice and economic efficiency

In conventional economic theory, a trade-off supposedly existsbetween social justice and economic efficiency. In reality,market and other economic institutions are dominated by powerrelations, so that the sponsorship of social justice is a productivefactor. Neo-liberal economic policies, by lifting the constraintson the exercise of unequal power, increased injustice and triggereda downward economic and social spiral. Reversing this requiresa revolution in economic theory and policy focused on full employment,the working of labour markets, the organisation of work, andhousehold organisation, social provision and self-sufficiency.     

辞退解除劳动合同中的公平性判断

人事争议仲裁作为一种既不同于司法又有别于行政的准司法行为,在化解人事纠纷、平息人事争端、促进社会稳定与和谐发展方面,有着非常特别、无可替代的重要作用。根据建设和谐社会的基本要求,我国的人事争议仲裁工作的目标和职能需要进一步扩展和深化。     

Self-interest and fairness: self-serving choices of justice principles

We introduce non-enforceable property rights over a bargaining surplus in a dictator game with production, where the agent’s effort is differentially rewarded and subsequently determines the size of the surplus. Using experimental data, we elicit individual preferences over the egalitarian, accountability and libertarian principles and provide evidence to support the inability of these justice principles to individually account for the observed behavior. We show that the justice principle that can be used to explain dictators’ choices depends on whether dictators are paid more or less than recipients for their effort. Our findings suggest that dictators do employ justice principles in self-serving ways and choose in each context the justice principle that maximizes their financial payoffs.     

Principles of economic justice: Marketplace and workplace applications

Mainstream economics argues that ethical standards are essentially relative, that they differ from one person to the next, and are entirely outside the limits of legitimate inquiry for economic science. Our view is that there are certain objective ethical standards to be applied that parallel the three modes of human interaction in economic affairs: person to person, superior to subordinate, and member to group. Those standards are given by the principle of equivalence, principle of distributive justice, and principle of contributive justice.