The Mirrlees Approach to the Theory of Economic Policy

Robin Boadway

International Tax and Public Finance, 1998, vol. 5, issue 1, 67-81

Abstract: This paper summarizes James Mirrlees' key contribution to the theory of tax policy. It argues that the Mirrlees approach of viewing government as being constrained by imperfect information has changed profoundly how we look at the normative public policy. In this view, asymmetric information provides the limit to redistribution by restricting the efficiency-equity trade-off. It leads to consideration of other policy instruments for relaxing incentive constraints and improving the efficiency of redistributive policies. Some of these instruments include quantity controls, in-kind transfers and public provision or mandating of insurance, things we observe in practice. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998

Keywords: Mirrlees; incentive constraints; optimal policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1008668509373 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:5:y:1998:i:1:p:67-81

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/10797/PS2

DOI: 10.1023/A:1008668509373

Access Statistics for this article

International Tax and Public Finance is currently edited by Ronald B. Davies and Kimberly Scharf

More articles in International Tax and Public Finance from Springer, International Institute of Public Finance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().