Showing 1 - 10 of 88
Kaplow (1996) and others argue forcefully in favor of using the standard cost-benefit test alone, without any distributional concern, given “standard simplifying assumptions.” This paper, on the contrary, demonstrates that distributional weights, equal to the social marginal utility of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005651662
We examine the effect of addictive behavior on a socially optimal environmental tax. If utility in part depends on past consumption and individuals are time-consistent, the socially optimal environmental tax is shown to be equal to the conventional Pigovian tax. In a second-best world where the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005651663
We analyze how habit formation affects optimal environmental taxation, when consumption of a habitual good causes a negative external effect on the environment. In a simple two-period model, we show that optimal taxation is still Pigouvian, where tax rates equal marginal damage in each period....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005651688
Gold is frequently mined in rainforests that can provide either gold or forest benefits, but not both. This conflict in resource use occurs in Ghana, a developing country in the tropics where the capital needed for mining is obtained from foreign direct investment (FDI). We use a dynamic model...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005651756
Previous studies on public policy under relative consumption concerns have ignored the role of leisure comparisons. This paper considers a two-type optimal nonlinear income tax model where people care both about their relative consumption and their relative leisure. Increased consumption...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005771203
Almost all previous studies on public policy under relative consumption concerns have ignored the role of leisure for status comparisons. Inspired by Veblen (1899), this paper considers a two-type optimal income tax model, where people care about their relative consumption, and where the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008490333
This paper provides, from a theoretical and quantitative point of view, an explanation of why taxes on capital returns are high (around 35%) by analyzing the optimal fiscal policy in an economy with intergenerational redistribution. For this purpose, the government is modeled explicitly and can...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005176429
We study a setting with search frictions in the marriage market and with incomplete contracting inside the family. Everyone prefers a partner that has high income and is a perfect emotional match, but compromises must often be struck. A high income earner may abstain from marrying a low-income...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008876371
There still seems to be some confusion about the consequences of normalisations in the optimal taxation litterature. We claim that: 1) Normalisations do not matter for the real solution of optimal taxation problem. 2) Normalisations do matter for good characterisations of the solutions to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008919568
This paper contributes to recent literature emphasizing the importance to identify the different channels along which taxable income responses occur. Using bunching techniques and exploiting a large first kink point where marginal tax rates increase by as much as 38 percentage points, we recover...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011927204