An optimal linear world income tax that maximizes a border-neutral social welfare function provides a drastic reduction in world consumption inequality, dropping the Gini coefficient from 0.69 to 0.25. In contrast an optimal decentralized (i.e., within countries) redistribution has miniscule...

It is argued that taxation causes three kinds of deadweight losses and two types of direct costs. The deadweight losses arise from substitution, evasion, and avoidance activities while the direct costs are administrative and compliance costs. Some of these social costs tend to be discontinuous...

When tax structure changes, people may alter their consumption basket, but they also may call and give new instructions to their accountant, change their reports to the IRS, change the timing of transactions, and undertake a range of other actions that do not directly involve a change in their...

This paper seeks to clarify the extent to which the rule for providing public goods ought to correct for the distortionary cost of raising funds. We argue that, in evaluating public projects, the marginal cost of funds (MCF) concept must be supplemented by a symmetrical concept, which we label...

This paper addresses the optimal degree of law enforcement regarding tax evasion. It derives the conditions that characterize the optimal size of a tax collection agency, and then provides a simple interpretation of the conditions in terms of excess burden.The paper clarified earlier findings...

In this paper, we suggest a method which enables the user to identify commodities that all individuals who can agree on certain weak assumptions with regard to the social welfare function will agree upon as worth subsidizing or taxing in the absence of efficiency considerations. The method is...

We investigate the optimal rate structure of an income tax system that is constrained to have only two brackets, plus a demogrant. We find that, in a two-class economy, Pareto efficient tax schedules feature at least one marginal tax rate equal to zero, and that the marginal tax rate may be...