An Investigation into Alternative Representations of the Average and Marginal Cost of Public Funds

The literature on the average and marginal cost of public funds and the average and marginal excess burden is presently a very rich one. A problem in this literature, is that a whole range of alternative measures are interpreted as representing the cost from collecting tax revenues. This paper derives and compares some commonly used measures, and adds a couple of new ones. Performing a cross-comparison of the various measures seems to be a useful exercise in order to be able to distinguish between which measure telling us what.