비용편익분석에서의 분배가중치

A Legitimate Usage of the Distributional Weights: A Theoretical Background for Using the Political Weights

This paper sheds light on the problems of these two approaches of using the distributional weights and to suggest a more legitimate way of using the social welfare function in determining the distributional weights. The social welfare function and individual utility function used in the approaches are quite restrictive, since they are designed for using marginal income tax rates as measures f marginal utilities of income. The marginal income tax rates are good for determining the weights for income groups, but they cannot reflect the distributional weights for social characteristics which can be important in some projects. In order to use the marginal income tax rates, we should allow the marginal contribution of the individual to the social welfare to vary across individuals, especially with social characteristics. Then, in addition to the weights on income groups, an additional weight can be given to the social characteristics on the basis of the political interests of the planners. This paper suggests to use the marginal contribution of the groups to social welfare reflecting the social characteristics which may be the major concerns of planners.