Most contributions to optimal tax theory have assumed that all prices, including that of leisure, are known with certainty. The purpose of this paper is to analyze optimal taxation when workers have imperfect information about their wages at the time they choose their labor supplies. Both...

This paper is an econometric analysis of the on-the-job training (OJT) decisions of a group of white American males during 1975. The data are obtained from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which asked a very careful series of questions concerning the individual's OJT status. Each individual's...

MANY COMMODITIES can be viewed as bundles of individual attributes for which no explicit markets exist. It is often of interest to estimate structural demand and supply functions for these attributes, but the absence of directly observable attribute prices poses a problem for such estimation. In...

This paper investigates the effect of entrepreneurs' personal income tax situations on their use of labor. We analyze the income tax returns of a large number of sole proprietors before and after the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and determine how the substantial reductions in marginal tax rates...

In this paper we analyze taxation using the conjectural variations model of oligopoly. We demonstrate the way in which the incidence of a tax depends upon the pattern of firm interaction. The results obtained have important implications for the controversy surrounding the question of whether a...

This paper investigates the effect of entrepreneurs' personal income tax situations on their capital investment decisions. We examine the income tax returns of a sample of sole proprietors before and after the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and determine how the substantial reductions in marginal tax...

In this paper we examine the trends in housing conditions among the urban poor over the last decade, relate these trends to the economic environments of the cities, and compare the poor to other income groups. We find that there has been a substantial decrease in "housing independence" -- among...

Economists have been paying increasing attention to the study of situations in which consumers face a discrete rather than a continuous set of choices. Such models are potentially very important in evaluating the impact of government programs upon consumer welfare. But very little has been said...

This paper analyzes the role of liquidity constraints in the formation of new entrepreneurial enterprises. The basic empirical strategy is to determine whether an individual's wealth affects the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, and the conditional amounts of depreciable assets, ceteris...

A number of suggestions have been made to reform the tax treatment of the family. None of these proposals has been accompanied by careful estimates of their effects on the income distribution, revenue collections, and labor supply. The purpose of this paper is to provide such information. Our...