Socially Improving Tax Reforms

This article proposes graphical methods to determine whether commodity tax changes are "socially improving," in the sense of improving social welfare or decreasing poverty for large classes of social welfare and poverty indices. It also shows how estimators of critical poverty lines and ec...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Duclos, Jean-Yves, Makdissi, Paul, Wodon, Quentin
Format: Journal Article
Language:EN
Published: 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5677
Description
Summary:This article proposes graphical methods to determine whether commodity tax changes are "socially improving," in the sense of improving social welfare or decreasing poverty for large classes of social welfare and poverty indices. It also shows how estimators of critical poverty lines and economic efficiency ratios can be used to characterize socially improving tax reforms. The methodology is illustrated using Mexican data.