In Rawls' (1971) influential social contract approach to distributive justice, the fair income distribution is the one that an individual would choose behind a veil of ignorance. Harsanyi (1953, 1955, 1975) treats this situation as a decision under risk and arrives at utilitarianism using...

Given the key role of the taxable income elasticity in designing an optimal tax system there are many studies attempting to estimate this elasticity. A problem with most of these studies is that strong functional form assumptions are used and that heterogeneity in preferences is not allowed for....

This article reconsiders the role of dividend taxation and its effect on the cost of capital of small firms. Using a simple portfolio model for small open economies, we show that a decrease in dividend taxes on large companies unambiguously increases the required rate of return for small...