We reexamine estimates of the social cost of carbon (SCC) used by agencies as the price of carbon emissions in cost-benefit analysis, focusing on those by the federal Interagency Working Group on SCC (IWG). We show that the models used by the IWG assume continued economic growth in the face of...

A regulator, seeking to maximize net benefits, must choose between rules and standards and then set a level of care. The regulated agents have private information about their compliance costs. Rules are set ex ante, so agents know the required level of care. Standards are established after...

This paper analyzes the consequences of happiness research for taxation. It focuses on the finding that happiness depends on status as well as income, examining how adding status concerns to standard optimal tax models changes the results. It then compares the empirical findings of the happiness...

Depreciation is difficult and expensive to measure yet central to taxing capital income. This paper focuses on depreciation of intangibles and considers whether measurement resources should be allocated to intangibles with longer lives on the theory that depreciation matters more for long-term...