The Normative Analysis of Tagging Revisited: Dealing with Stigmatization

Laurence Jacquet and Bruno Van der Linden

FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, 2006, vol. 62, issue 2, 168-198

Abstract: Should income transfers be conditional upon personal characteristics of the potential recipients (so-called tagging), or should they only be tied to reported incomes? A still widespread social norm consists in requiring that individuals (of working age) support themselves and their families. Being a welfare recipient is then socially disapproved because it reveals to others that one is unable to fend for oneself and one´s family. In this context, tagging is always suboptimal under a maximin criterion. With a utilitarian criterion, tagging can only be recommended if the distribution of the intensity of stigmatization relative to earnings has small mean and variance and if the mean and variance of the distribution of abilities among the high-ability people are neither too large nor too small.

Keywords: tagging; optimal taxation; welfare programs; stigmatization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H2 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/the-normati ... 1628001522106x120640 (text/html)
Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Normative Analysis of ‘Tagging’ Revisited: Dealing with Stigmatization (2003)
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:mhr:finarc:urn:sici:0015-2218(200606)62:2_168:tnaotr_2.0.tx_2-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG, P.O.Box 2040, 72010 Tübingen, Germany

DOI: 10.1628/001522106X120640

Access Statistics for this article

FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis is currently edited by Alfons Weichenrieder, Ronnie Schöb and Jean-François Tremblay

More articles in FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis from Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Wolpert ().