SOME PROBLEMS IN THE MEASUREMENT OF THE REDISTRIBUTORY EFFECTS OF THE GOVERNMENT BUDGET

1.1 Of late, there has been a marked increase of interest in the problems posed by the measurement bf the effects of the budget on the distribution of income Governments in many countries have come to egard the budget as one of the main instruments of income redistribution, and I know that there is great interest in the possibility of using fiscal measures for this purpose in Turkey. Recent refinements in national income accounting and the theory of public finance, notably incidence theory, have played their part in laying bare the difficulties of analysing the effects of fiscal measures devoted to this objective. Even if governments were not conscious of the need to use the budget for this objective alone, the sheer size of the budget in relation to the rest of the economy in many countries is bound to make it a major influence on both the pre-tax and posttax distribution of income. More accurately, it is this very question of size which has led to the introduction in measurement studies of the effect of government expenditures as well as receipts on income distribution, so that we should be talking not merely of the influence of taxes but of the budget as a whole on the distribution of income.As we shall see later, this presents us with a further series of methodological problems alongside those already known.