This paper critiques the arguments put by the Howard Government for an unadulterated, flat rate GST policy, by taking the characterisation of the current wholesale sales tax (WST) as an outdated tax without design or logic, ans showing this view to be historically wrong and superficial. It does...

The author has been concerned about the capacities of the Canadian economy to restore itself after an adverse economic shock. There is less trust in the institutions of government. The social cohesion that helped to build the sharing economy through the 1960s and early 1970s has been seriously...

This paper studies the optimal direct/indirect tax mix in a setting where individuals differ in several unobservable characteristics (productivity and endowments). Tax instruments (income and commodity taxes) are constrained solely by the information structure.

This paper considers a government that seeks both to redistribute income and to encourage or discourage the consumption of a certain good. This good is assumed to be either a merit or demerit good. Individuals differ in their exogenous income and in their preferences for the merit good. The...

This paper analyzez socially optimal forest taxation when the government has a binding tax revenue requirement. In the Faustmann model the optimal design of forest taxation consists of non-distortionary taxes, such as site productivity tax, site value tax or profit tax.

This paper examines the properties of the optimal nonlinear income tax when preferences are quasilinear in leisure and heterogeneous. Individuals differ in their ability and in their preferences for leisure. The government seeks to redistribute income. It can perfectly observe the level of...

The author has been concerned about the capacities of the Canadian economy to restore itself after an adverse economic shock. There is less trust in the institutions of government. The social cohesion that helped to build the sharing economy through the 1960s and early 1970s has been seriously...

Many public goods generate utility only when combined with time-input. Important examples include road networks and publicly provided leisure facilities. If it is possible to charge for the time spent using the public good it is generally a second-best Pareto optimal policy to do so even in the...

This paper uses the geometric analysis in Cornes and Sandler to demonstrate the Lindahl equilibrium when private contributions are subsidised in a non-cooperative setting i.e., in a setting where consumers take as constant the contributions by all others when making their own.

We study the politics of intergenerational redistribution in an overlapping-generations model with short-lived governements. The successive governements -who care about the welfare of the currently living generations and possibly about campaign contributions- are unable to pre-commit the future...