| 1. |
- Hauge, K. E., et al.
(författare)
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Keeping others in our mind or in our heart? Distribution games under cognitive load
- 2016
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Ingår i: Experimental Economics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1386-4157 .- 1573-6938. ; 19:3, s. 562-576
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It has recently been argued that giving is spontaneous while greed is calculated (Rand et al., in Nature 489:427-430, 2012). If greed is calculated we would expect that cognitive load, which is assumed to reduce the influence of cognitive processes, should affect greed. In this paper we study both charitable giving and the behavior of dictators under high and low cognitive load to test if greed is affected by the load. This is tested in three different dictator game experiments. In the dictator games we use both a give frame, where the dictators are given an amount that they may share with a partner, and a take frame, where dictators may take from an amount initially allocated to the partner. The results from all three experiments show that the behavioral effect in terms of allocated money of the induced load is small if at all existent. At the same time, follow-up questions indicate that the subjects' decisions are more impulsive and less driven by their thoughts under cognitive load.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Charity as income redistribution : a model with optimal taxation, status, and social stigma
- 2019
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In light of the increasing inequality in many countries, this paper analyzes redistributive charitable giving from the rich to the poor in a model of optimal nonlinear income taxation. Our framework integrates (i) public and private redistribution, (ii) the warm glow of giving and stigma of receiving charitable donations, and (iii) status concerns emanating from social comparisons with respect to charitable donations and private consumption. Whether charity should be taxed or supported largely depends on the relative strengths of the warm glow of giving and the stigma of receiving charity, respectively, and on the positional externalities caused by charitable donations. In addition, imposing stigma on the mimicker (which relaxes the self-selection constraint) strengthens the case for subsidizing charity. We also consider a case where the government is unable to target the charitable giving through a direct tax instrument, and we examine how the optimal marginal income tax structure should be adjusted in response to charitable giving. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the quantitative effects of the aforementioned mechanisms can be substantial.
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| 4. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Charity, status, and optimal taxation : welfarist and paternalist approaches
- 2019
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper deals with tax policy responses to charitable giving, defined in terms of voluntary contributions to a public good, to which the government also contributes through public revenue; the set of tax instruments contains general, nonlinear taxes on income and charitable giving. In addition to consumption, leisure and a public good, individuals obtain utility from the warm glow of giving and social status generated by their relative contributions to charity as well as their relative consumption compared with others. We analyze the conditions under which it is optimal to tax or subsidize charitable giving and derive corresponding optimal policy rules. Another aim of the paper is to compare the optimal tax policy and public good provision by a conventional welfarist government with those by two kinds of paternalist governments: The first kind does not respect the consumer preferences for status in terms of relative giving and relative consumption, while the second kind in addition does not respect preferences for warm glow of giving. The optimal policy rules for marginal taxation and public good provision are similar across governments, except for the stronger incentive to tax charitable giving at the margin under the more extensive kind of paternalism. Numerical simulations supplement the theoretical results.
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| 5. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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Genuine Saving and Conspicuous Consumption
- 2016
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Much evidence suggests that people are concerned with their relative consumption, i.e., their own consumption relative to that of others. Yet, conspicuous consumption and the corresponding social costs have so far been ignored in savings-based indicators of sustainable development. The present paper examines the implications of relative consumption concerns for measures of sustainable development by deriving analogues to genuine saving when people are concerned with their relative consumption. Unless the positional externalities have been fully internalized, an indicator of such externalities must be added to genuine saving to arrive at the proper measure of intertemporal welfare change. A numerical example based on U.S. and Swedish data suggests that conventional measures of genuine saving (which do not reflect conspicuous consumption) are likely to largely overestimate this welfare change. We also show how relative consumption concerns affect the way public investment ought to be reflected in genuine saving.
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| 6. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Genuine Saving and Positional Externalities
- 2017
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Ingår i: International Economic Review. - : Wiley. - 0020-6598 .- 1468-2354. ; 58:4, s. 1155-1190
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Much evidence suggests that people are concerned with their relative consumption. Yet, positional externalities have so far been ignored in savings-based indicators of sustainable development. This article examines the implications of relative consumption concerns for measures of sustainable development by deriving analogues to genuine saving when people are concerned with their relative consumption. Unless the positional externalities have been internalized, an indicator of such externalities must be added to genuine saving to arrive at the proper measure of welfare change. We also show how relative consumption concerns affect the way public investment ought to be reflected in genuine saving.
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| 7. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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Inequality Aversion and Marginal Income Taxation
- 2016
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper deals with tax policy responses to inequality aversion by examining the first-best Pareto-efficient marginal tax structure when people are inequality averse. In doing so, we distinguish between four different and widely used models of inequality aversion. The results show that empirically and experimentally quantified degrees of inequality aversion have potentially very strong implications for Pareto-efficient marginal income taxation. It also turns out that the exact type of inequality aversion (self-centered vs. non-self-centered), and the measures of inequality used, matter a great deal. For example, based on simulation results mimicking the disposable income distribution in the US in 2013, the preferences suggested by Fehr and Schmidt (1999) imply monotonically increasing marginal income taxes, with large negative marginal tax rates for low-income individuals and large positive marginal tax rates for high-income individuals. In contrast, the often considered similar model by Bolton and Ockenfels (2000) implies close to zero marginal income tax rates for all.
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| 8. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Keeping up with the Joneses, the Smiths and the Tanakas : on international tax coordination and social comparisons
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Public Economics. - : Elsevier. - 0047-2727 .- 1879-2316. ; 131, s. 71-86
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent evidence suggests that social comparisons between people in different countries have become more important over time due to globalization. This paper deals with optimal nonlinear income taxation in an international setting, where consumers derive utility from their relative consumption compared both with other domestic residents and people in another country. The optimal tax policy in our framework reflects both correction for positional externalities and redistributive aspects of such correction due to the incentive constraint facing each government. If the national governments behave as Nash competitors to each other, the resulting tax policy only internalizes the externalities that are due to within-country comparisons, whereas the tax policy chosen by the leader country in a Stackelberg game also to some extent reflects between-country comparisons. We also derive globally Pareto-efficient tax policies in a cooperative framework, and conclude that there are potentially large welfare gains of international tax policy coordination.
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| 9. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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Keeping up with the Joneses, the Smiths and the Tanakas: On International Tax Coordination and Social Comparisons
- 2015
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Much evidence suggests that between-country social comparisons have become more important over time due to globalization. This paper analyzes optimal income taxation in a multi-country economy, where consumers derive utility from their relative consumption compared with both other domestic residents and people in other countries. The optimal tax policy in our framework reflects both correction for positional externalities and redistributive aspects of such correction due to the incentive constraint facing each government. If the national governments behave as Nash competitors to one another, the resulting tax policy only internalizes the externalities that are due to within-country comparisons, whereas the tax policy chosen by the leader country in a Stackelberg game also to some extent reflects between-country comparisons. We also derive globally efficient tax policies in a cooperative framework, and conclude that there are potentially large welfare gains of international tax policy coordination resulting from cross-country social comparisons.
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| 10. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Paternalism against Veblen: Optimal Taxation and Non-respected Preferences for Social Comparisons
- 2018
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Ingår i: American Economic Journal-Economic Policy. - : American Economic Association. - 1945-7731 .- 1945-774X. ; 10:1, s. 39-76
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper compares optimal nonlinear income tax policies of welfarist and paternalist governments, where the latter does not respect individual preferences regarding relative consumption. Consistent with previous findings, relative consumption concerns typically induce a welfarist government to increase the marginal tax rates to internalize positional externalities. Remarkably, the optimal marginal tax rules are often very similar in the paternalist case, where such externalities are not taken into account. We identify several cases where the marginal tax rules are indeed identical between the governments. Numerical simulations show that marginal and average tax levels and the overall redistribution are often also similar.
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| 11. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Redistribution through Charity and Optimal Taxation when People are Concerned with Social Status
- 2016
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper deals with tax policy responses to charitable giving based on a model of optimal redistributive income taxation. The major contribution is the simultaneous treatment of (i) warm-glow and stigma effects of charitable donations; (ii) that the warm glow of giving and stigma of receiving charity may to some extent depend on relative comparisons; and (iii) that people are also concerned with their relative consumption more generally. Whether charity should be taxed or supported turns out to largely depend on the relative strengths of the warm glow of giving and the stigma of receiving charity, respectively, and on the positional externalities caused by charitable donations. In addition, imposing stigma on the mimicker (via a relaxation of the self-selection constraint) strengthens the case for subsidizing charity. We also consider a case where the government is unable to target the charitable giving through a direct tax instrument, and examine how the optimal marginal income tax structure is adjusted in response to charitable giving.
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| 12. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Social Comparisons and Optimal Taxation in a Small Open Economy
- 2016
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Almost all previous studies on optimal taxation and status consumption are based on closed model-economies. This paper analyzes how international capital mobility – which may constrain the use of capital income taxation – affects the optimal redistributive income tax policy in a small open economy when consumers care about their relative consumption. If the government can perfectly observe (and tax) returns on savings abroad, it is shown that the policy rules for marginal labor and capital income taxation derived for a closed economy largely carry over to the small open economy analyzed here. However, if these returns are unobserved by the government, the marginal tax policy rules will be very different from those pertaining to closed model-economies. In this case, capital income taxes on domestic savings will be completely ineffective, since such taxes would induce the consumers to move their savings abroad. The labor income tax must then indirectly also reflect the corrective purpose that the absent capital income tax would otherwise have had.
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| 13. |
- Aronsson, Thomas, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Social Comparisons and Optimal Taxation in a Small Open Economy
- 2019
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Economics. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0347-0520 .- 1467-9442. ; 121:4, s. 1500-1532
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper, we analyze how international capital mobility affects the optimal labor and capital income tax policy in a small open economy when consumers care about relative consumption. The main results crucially depend on whether the government can tax returns on savings abroad. If the government can use flexible residence-based capital income taxes, then the optimal policy rules from a closed economy largely carry over to the case of a small open economy. If it cannot, then capital income taxes become completely ineffective. The labor income taxes must then indirectly also reflect the corrective purpose that the absent capital income tax would have had.
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| 14. |
- Brekke, K. A., et al.
(författare)
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The Behavioural Economics of Climate Change
- 2015
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Ingår i: The Economics and Politics of Climate Change. - Oxford : Oxford University Press. - 9780199573288
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter examines the economics of climate change from the perspective of behavioural economics: as market data simply reflect the aggregate of human behaviour of participants, understanding this behaviour and its normative significance is relevant to thinking about discounting, just as it is relevant to the design of climate change policy. The chapter considers the choice of discount rates and the ethics of discounting in a world where people are not time-consistent expected-utility maximisers, along with self control and social discount rates. It also addresses the issue of human cooperation in general, and implications for climate negotiations in particular. © Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2009. All rights reserved.
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| 15. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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Funding a new bridge in rural Vietnam:a field experiment on social influence and default contributions
- 2015
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Ingår i: Oxford Economic Papers. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0030-7653 .- 1464-3812. ; 67:4, s. 987-1014
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Public goods provision is essential for economic development. Yet there is limited evidence regarding contributions to local public goods in developing countries. This article analyses a field experiment where all 200 households in a village in rural Vietnam make real contributions to a public good that is very important for them in daily life—a bridge. We study the role of social influence (that people may be more willing to co-operate if others do) and the effects of the default alternative in the choice situation. We find significant and substantial (in the order of magnitude of 15–25%) effects of both social influence and defaults but only when providing low reference or default contributions.
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| 16. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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Nudging as an Environmental Policy Instrument
- 2019
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We discuss the use of green nudges – nudges intended to reduce negative externalities – as an environmental policy instrument. A review of empirical studies reveals that green nudges can have a sizeable impact on behavior and the environment, but that the effects are context dependent. In the policy discussion, drawing on both the empirical overview and basic welfare-economic models, it is emphasized that while green nudges seem to have a large potential, they offer no panacea for solving environmental problems. Instead, they should be seen as a policy instrument among others in the regulator’s toolbox. In particular, we discuss the potential role of nudging when environmental externalities can be dealt with using optimal Pigovian taxes, and when they cannot. Nudging has a greater potential when such taxes are not available or feasible.
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| 17. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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Optimal Prosocial Nudging
- 2019
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- While nudges are still mostly associated with affecting individual choices for their own long-run interest, i.e. dealing with internalities, they are increasingly used in order to reduce externalities, such as environmental consequences. While we are gaining increasing insights into when and how nudges work, much less attention has been given to the normative aspects of nudging as a policy instrument to deal with externalities. We investigate optimal prosocial nudging under a number of different settings in a world where a conventional Pigovian tax can be used to a varying extent. We find that nudges typically only play a limited role when optimal taxes can be implemented. What we denote encouraging moral nudges, i.e. nudges where people’s choices are affected by strengthening consumers’ moral norms for doing the right thing, are more likely to play a role even when the tax is optimal compared to purely cognitive nudges. In addition, if a nudge better can target the right consumers, then it might also be optimal to use even when an optimal tax can be implemented. We also present decision rules for the optimal size of a nudge when an optimal tax cannot be implemented.
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| 18. |
- Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 1966
(författare)
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Animal Welfare and Social Decisions: Is It Time to Take Bentham Seriously?
- 2018
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Ingår i: Ecological Economics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0921-8009. ; 145, s. 90-103
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper analyzes and questions the standard welfare economics assumption of anthropocentric welfarism, i.e., that only human well-being counts intrinsically. Alternatives where also animal welfare matters intrinsically are analyzed both theoretically and empirically. The general public's ethical preferences are measured through a survey of a representative sample in Sweden, and the responses from a clear majority suggest that animal welfare should indeed carry intrinsic weight in public decision making. Current legislation in many countries is consistent with this. A brief review of moral philosophy on animal welfare indicates that a large majority of philosophers believe that animal welfare should count intrinsically. It is moreover demonstrated that it is theoretically and practically possible to generalize welfare economics in order to give intrinsic value also to animal welfare. The paper concludes that there are strong reasons to (sometimes) generalize welfare economics in order to take animal welfare into account directly, i.e., in addition to effects through individual utilities. The practical implications of doing so are likely to be more important over time as the scientific methods of measuring animal welfare are gradually improving.
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| 19. |
- Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 1966, et al.
(författare)
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Discounting and Relative Consumption
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. - : Elsevier BV. - 0095-0696 .- 1096-0449. ; 71:May, s. 19-33
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We analyze optimal social discount rates when people derive utility from relative consumption, i.e. their own consumption level relative to the consumption level of others. We compare the social, private, and conventional Ramsey rates. Assuming a positive growth rate, we find that (1) the social discount rate exceeds the private discount rate if the importance of relative consumption increases with consumption, and that (2) the social discount rate is lower than the Ramsey rate given quasi-concavity in own and others’ consumption and risk aversion with respect to others’ consumption. Numerical calculations demonstrate that the latter difference may be substantial and have important implications for long run environmental issues such as global warming.
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| 20. |
- Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 1966, et al.
(författare)
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DN Debatt: Det territoriella perspektivet fortfarande viktigast
- 2015
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Ingår i: Dagens Nyheter. - 1101-2447.
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Styrmedel baserade på territorialperspektivet är bättre, för de påverkar både produktionsmetoder och sammansättningen på konsumtion, skriver Olof Johansson-Stenman, Thomas Sterner och Christian Azar.
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| 21. |
- Sterner, Thomas, 1952, et al.
(författare)
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Att fimpa koldioxidskatten sänder ödesdiger signal
- 2016
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Ingår i: Göteborgs Posten. - 1103-9345.
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Tidskriftsartikel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- Det spelar totalt sett mindre roll om man använder ett effektivt eller ett ineffektivt styrmedel i ett litet land som Sverige, eftersom det är de globala utsläppen som spelar roll. Därför är fortfarande koldioxidskatt ett effektivt verktyg att minska utsläppen, skriver bland andra Thomas Sterner, professor i miljöekonomi.
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| 22. |
- Sterner, Thomas, 1952, et al.
(författare)
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Policy design for the Anthropocene
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Sustainability. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2398-9629. ; 2, s. 14-21
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- © 2019, Springer Nature Limited. Today, more than ever, ‘Spaceship Earth’ is an apt metaphor as we chart the boundaries for a safe planet1. Social scientists both analyse why society courts disaster by approaching or even overstepping these boundaries and try to design suitable policies to avoid these perils. Because the threats of transgressing planetary boundaries are global, long-run, uncertain and interconnected, they must be analysed together to avoid conflicts and take advantage of synergies. To obtain policies that are effective at both international and local levels requires careful analysis of the underlying mechanisms across scientific disciplines and approaches, and must take politics into account. In this Perspective, we examine the complexities of designing policies that can keep Earth within the biophysical limits favourable to human life.
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