It is well known that consumption-tax systems have several advantages over existing income-tax systems, such as greater administrative simplicity and intertemporal neutrality. Despite these advantages, proposals to introduce consumption taxes have only had very limited success. This paper...

This paper examines a model of sequential cost-saving innovations financed by venture capital. Successful firms in research can enter the market with a cost advantage over older firms and acquire market power. Innovators have the technical knowledge to conduct R&D but lack the necessary...

This paper explores the rationale for unemployment benefits as a complement to optimal nonlinear income taxation. We find under plausible assumptions that the optimal unemployment benefits targeted at the low-skilled will be higher than the pure insurance and efficiency purposes would prescribe....

This paper presents a general-equilibrium model of environmental tax reform that introduces a health status depending on environmental quality and medical consumption, and tax deductions for medical expenditure. It distinguishes between two types of health effect: environmentally and medically...

The paper analyzes the optimal income taxation policy when inequity aversion exists among taxpayers. The influence of inequity aversion on the optimal income tax scheme depends on whether taxpayers are concerned about inequality in wages or in rents (i.e., wages minus effort costs). If agents...

This contribution investigates the justifiable spread between labor and capital income tax rates under a dual income tax, based on arguments put forth in Nielsen and Sørensen (1997). An efficient generalized instrumental variables estimator proposed by Hausman and Taylor (1981) is employed in a...

We analyze the decision rules governing public employment policy, capital allocation between private and public sector, and the size of the public sector in a two-type and two-sector optimal nonlinear income-tax model with endogenous wages. The government can reduce wage inequality in the...

Using the self-selection framework developed by Stiglitz (1982, 1987) and Stern (1982), the paper reconsiders the issue of the desirability of public provision of private goods in a simple two-class economy where wages are endogenous and the policymaker has access to what is commonly known as...

This paper considers efficient regulation in polluting and imperfectly competitive durable-good markets without commitment ability of producers. If producers rent the durable, then the efficient regulatory scheme consists of a Pigovian emissions tax and a subsidy on the stock of the durable...

We apply theories of capital-market failure to analyze optimal financing of risky higher education. In the market solution, students can only finance theireducation through debt. There is underinvestment in human capital because some students with socially profitable investments in human capital...