Merit goods and phantom agents

Bart Capéau () and Erwin Ooghe ()

Economics Bulletin, 2003, vol. 8, issue 8, pages 1-5

Abstract: Besley (1988) is one of the few exceptional articles containing non-welfarist optimal tax devices. Feehan (1990) reports an error in his first-best rules. The present note argues that Besley's second-best rules optimize the welfare of phantom agents rather than the corrected welfare of real existing agents in society.

Keywords: merit goods; non-welfare economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H2 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003 Written 2003-07-01
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economicsbulletin.com/2003/volume8/EB-03H20001A.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics Bulletin from Economics Bulletin
Address: Economics Bulletin, Department of Economics, 414 Calhoun Hall, Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN 37235, USA
Series data maintained by John Conley ().