The effects of both habit formation and status concerns are analyzed within a model with short-lived households and a long-lived public good, environmental quality. Status seeking induces households to raise consumption of goods and leisure, and pollution, and to lower environmental quality....

This paper analyzes the effects of nonatmospheric consumption externalities on optimal commodity taxation and on the social cost and optimal levels of public good provision. A negative consumption externality, by lowering the social cost of public good provision, may require the second-best...

We analyze the effects of a generalized class of negative consumption externalities (asymmetric and non-atmospheric) on the structure of efficient commodity tax programs. Households are not only concerned about consumption reference levels — that is, they gain utility from “keeping up with...

We study transitional dynamics and speed of convergence in economic growth. Based on a canonical framework the analysis revisits both “old” and “new” growth literature along three dimensions: (i) What if growth is not exogenous but endogenous and driven by learning by doing? (ii) What if...