In a sequence of illuminating papers, Goulder, Parry, Burtraw and Williams decompose the effects of using environmental instruments like taxes and quotas within a second-best setting, i.e., in the presence of pre-existing taxes. We find this paer of their analyses most revealing. They also...

The literature on the average and marginal cost of public funds and the average and marginal excess burden is presently a very rich one. A problem in this literature, is that a whole range of alternative measures are interpreted as representing the cost from collecting tax revenues. This paper...

Triest (1990) argues that measuring the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) and the marginal excess burden (MEB) requires equivalent variation measures: MCF should be evaluated at consumer prices while MEB requires the use of producer prices. This paper follows up on Triest's argument by showing...

The paper employs a standard model of dynamic price competition to study how international principles of value-added taxation affect the stability of collusive agreements when producers in an international duopoly agree not to export into each other's home market. If costs of production are...

With internationally mobile labour and the abolition of national border controls, the individual may not only have private information about his skill level (adverse selection), but also about the length of time he resides and works in the home country (moral hazard) and about his foreign...