The paper studies the trade-off between efficiency and equity objectives within a model of commodity taxation. It derives two formulations for a many-person Ramsey tax rule in the presence of externalities. The first tax rule reveals that the aggregate compensated decrease in the demand for a...

We analyze the analytical structure of optimal taxation of polluting and non-polluting goods in a second-best world where lump-sum taxes are infeasible. After deriving the environmental tax rate which exactly internalizes the external effect, we show how to separate the analysis of second-best...