An Investigation into Alternative Representations of the Marginal Cost of Public Funds

The literature on the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) and the marginal excess burden is presently a very rich one. A problem with this literature, is that several different measures are interpreted as MCF. This paper derives and compares some commonly used measures, and introduces an alternative. Performing a cross-comparison of the various measures seems to be a useful exercise in order to be able to distinguish between which measure is telling us what. Such a taxonomy might clarify the sense in which the different concepts should be used in future writings on this field.