Tax evasion is modeled as a risky activity and integrated into a standard problem of optimal tax design. It is shown that there is a trade off between reducing tax evasion and reducing tax distortion. Thus it is efficient to supplement a broad-based wage tax by a tax on specific consumption if...

This paper examines the question of achieving a societal consensus around redistributive policies. Its extent is measured by the degree of work participation among the different skill classes that populate the economy. This consensus is driven both by the material incentives and heterogeneous...

This paper analyzes optimal linear commodity taxes joint with non-linear income taxes. We provide optimal tax rules based on empirically observable elasticities. We demonstrate that commodities should be taxed/subsidized if doing so boosts labor supply. The critical role of commodity taxation is...

A fundamental issues in designing any fiscal regime for non-renewable resources is the balance between rent taxes and royalties. This paper reviews the core issues that arise, in terms of both efficient rent extraction and correcting various market failures. Issues of asymmetric information, for...

Until fairly recently, the Pigovian position that activities generating unpriced external economies would be undersupplied was universally accepted. It rested on the simple assertion that marginal social benefits exceeded marginal private benefits of the activity, and that, by equating the...

The use of unemployment insurance and minimum wages as instruments for redistributing income are analyzed. The government is assumed to be able to implement an optimal income tax in an economy consisting of two ability-types of persons. The effect of introducing a minimum wage which induces...

Using the self-selection approach to tax analysis, this paper derives a modified Samuelson Rule for the provision of public goods when the government deploys an optimal non-linear income tax. This approach gives a straightforward interpretation of the central result in this area, generalizes it...

A model is constructed in which, given the inability of implicit contracts to be self-enforcing, a minimum wage policy combined with unemployment insurance can be welfare-improving. Unemployment insurance can be decentralized to the private sector if the government can commit to a minimum wage....

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...

Time inconsistency of tax policy is shown to arise in a setting in which households differ in their ability to accumulate wealth and the government has redistributional objectives. The government can levy non-distorting taxes but is precluded from redistributing optimally by a self-selection...