価値財と非価値財の政治経済学

CGS課税と公益法人非課税の問題

抄録

The purpose of this paper is to clarify how should the merit and demerit goods be treated in the framework of tax policy from the viewpoint of political economy.
According to R. E. Kohn, the categorization of demerit and merit goods has become increasingly vague. And so he assumes a controversial good or service (CGS) that some people choose to consume, but which other people disdain, often on moral grounds, their utility diminished solely by their awareness that such goods or services are being consumed. He constructed a model in which the CGS can be treated as a Samuelson public good. The model assumes four persons, two of whom consume the CGS and whose marginal rate of substitution in consumption between the CGS and the numeraire good are equal, and two persons whose utility is less because of their awareness that the CGS is being consumed and whose marginal rates of substitution are summed rather than equated. The model is then used to illustrate the case in which sumptuary taxation is not efficient and the CGS should be prohibited. This paper criticized the view that if drinking liqueur should be prohibited just like the prohibition law in the U. S. A. illegally distilled spirits would prevail.
This paper also deals with merit goods in that should activities of charitable foundations be taxed or exempt if they engage their own charitable works. It is pointed out also that the political decision should be made not only by the viewpoint of economics of social welfare function, but also the economics of public choice. It follows that an acceptable social decision-process must meet an equal access condition.