Monetary valuations for mortality and health risk reductions, elicited through stated preference surveys, have been shown to include values placed on others’ welfare. Less attention has been paid to how these altruistic concerns, and hence willingness to pay (WTP), are affected when the public good is to be provided through taxation. We set up a theoretical framework to investigate this issue and show that when we move away from a first-best tax, WTP becomes distorted. However, once a ‘Veil of Ignorance’ is introduced into the model, this distortionary impact is reduced. We test this empirically using a laboratory experiment and confirm our theoretical findings, generating WTP values that are closer to the social optimum.

中文翻译：

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“无知之幕”能否减少扭曲性税收对公共物品估价的影响？

通过陈述的偏好调查得出的降低死亡率和降低健康风险的货币价值已显示包括对他人福利的价值。当要通过税收提供公共物品时，对这些利他主义的关注以及因此的支付意愿（WTP）的影响受到了较少的关注。我们建立了一个理论框架来调查此问题，并显示出当我们脱离首付税时，WTP会失真。但是，一旦将“无知之幕”引入模型，这种扭曲的影响就会减少。我们使用实验室实验对此进行了测试，并确认了我们的理论发现，得出了更接近社会最优值的WTP值。