This paper makes a fresh attempt at characterizing optimal commodity taxes. Under the usual assumptions, an extremely simple expression of second-best commodity taxes is derived, showing tax rates as functions of observable variables only, rather than as functions of unobservable variables such...

This paper makes a fresh attempt at characterizing optimal commodity taxes. Under the usual assumptions, an extremely simple expression for second-best commodity taxes is derived, showing tax rates as functions of observable variables only, rather than as functions of unobservable variables such...

This paper analyzes the effects of non-atmospheric 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...

This paper analyzes the effects of non-atmospheric 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...

This paper analyzes the effects of consumption externalities on optimal taxation and on the social cost and optimal levels of public good provision. If public and private goods are Hicksian complements and no lump sum taxes are available, the second-best level of public good provision can exceed...

Thepaper compares the efficiency of value added taxation (VAT),in which intermediate goods are not taxed, with that of cascadetaxation, in which they are, when levied on imperfectly-competitivevertically-related industries. One type of commodity taxationis not always superior to the other in...

A simple inventory theoretic model of cross-border shopping with transaction and storage costs is developed. Consumers incur fixed transaction and transportation costs to access the foreign market in which a perfect substitute of the domestic good is available. We show that the size of the...

Objectives. Starting from the idea that tax equity requirements, administration costs and the tendency towards tax evasion determine the design of tax systems, it is important to identify a satisfactory efficiency/equity deal in order to build a tax system as close to optimum requirements as...

We present a simple model of capital accumulation where agents care about their consumption relative to the consumption of other members of society. This concern with "envy" captures the intuition behind the growing body of empirical evidence that places interpersonal comparisons as a key...

This paper proposes a general framework for analysing commodity tax competition under destination and origin principles, based on three possible tax spillovers: the consumer price spillover, the producer price/terms of trade spillover, and rent spillovers. A model is presented which can be...