Paternalism, merit goods and specific egalitarianism are concepts we sometimes meet in the literature. The thing in common is that the policy maker does not fully respect the consumer sovereignty principle and designs policies according to some other criterion than individuals' preferences....

A strong case for public provision of certain private goods has been established for an economy in which individuals have homogeneous preferences but differ in skill levels. There has been a critique of this model/mechanism arguing that heterogeneous preferences at a given skill level would...

When a public good is excludable it is possible to change individuals for using the good. We study the role of prices on excludable public goods using an extention of the Stiglitz-Stern version of the Mirrless optimal income tax model. Our discussion includes both the case whrer the public good...

Non-linear income taxes and linear commodity taxes are analysed when people differ with respect to ability, high-skilled agents have heterogeneous preferences, and neither individual abilities nor preferences are observable. The paper highlights how informational constraints may motivate...

We impose a horizontal equity restriction on the problem of finding the optimal utilitarian tax mix. The horizontal equity constraint requires that individuals with the same ability have to pay the same amount of taxes regardless of their preferences for leisure. Contrary to normal findings, we...

In 1999 the EU abolished duty-free on intra-EU travel, whilst other countries still retain duty-free shopping for international travellers. We adress several aspects of duty-free trade, including effects on consumption, revenue and price-setting. From a global perspective we identify the...

This paper addresses transboundary environmental problems in the context of an optimal tax problem, when part of the labor force is mobile across countries. The policy instruments include both commodity taxation and nonlinear income taxation. We show how the tax policy in a noncooperative...