We examine how three sources of asymmetric information affect the supply of entrepreneurs and unemployment. In the first case, banks cannot observe entrepreneurs' risk of failure, so they ration credit. This increases the number of entrepreneurs and the level of unemployment. In the second case,...

NOTE: The following is a description of the paper and not the actual abstract. Equilibrium tax and expenditure policies are studied in a federation consisting of a federal government and several state governments. Each state begins with an initial distribution of residents of different ability...

The non-cooperative provision of public goods is analysed in the context of a two-stage game in which club size is determined endogenously. Equilibrium club size and voluntary labour supply are shown to be inefficient. The impact of optimally-chosen fiscal policies using simple instruments is...

Despite the fact that all developed economies levy broadly-based indirect taxes alongside direct taxes, little theory is devoted to explaining the direct-indirect tax mix. Our purpose is to show that if different taxes have different evasion characteristics, some optimal tax mix emerges...

Rochet (1989) showed that with distortionary income taxes, social insurance is a desirable redistributive device when risk and ability are negatively correlated. This finding is reexamined when ex post moral hazard and adverse selection are included, and under different informational...

An overlapping generations model is constructed in which individual wealth is related to educational attainment, and in which liquidity constraints my induce children to invest in a sub-optimal level of education given their ability. Borrowing for educational attainment is obtained from within...

Existing models of hospital financing advocate mixed schemes which include both lump-sum and cost-based payments. The doctor is generally the unique decision maker, which is unrealistic in a hospital setting where both managers and doctors are involved. This paper develops a model in which...

The literature on the use of differential commodity taxes/subsidies and that on quantity controls to supplement income taxation have developed separately from each other. The purpose of this paper is to combine these two strands in the standard framework of optimal non-linear income taxation. We...