The optimal capital income tax rate has been shown to be nonzero in overlapping generations (OLG) models, as it helps redistribute income between cohorts and individuals with different labor supply elasticities and individual productivities. We show in a medium-scale OLG model that the optimal...

This study examines optimal government redistribution in a Mirrleesian framework, accounting for a negative effect of longer working hours on productivity. A government ignoring this effect perceives labor supply as insufficient and sets lower marginal income taxes to encourage work. In...

We use variation in marginal tax rates and in tax bracket thresholds at which they apply in order to identify the substitution and income effects of tax reforms. We use a triple-difference estimator that exploits variation from subnational tax reforms, for which behavioral responses to taxes are...

The conventional wisdom is that a big jurisdiction sets a higher tax rate than a small jurisdiction. We show this result arises due to simplifying assumptions that imply tax-base sensitivities are equal across jurisdictions. When more than two jurisdictions compete in commodity taxes, tax-base...

Joint taxation of married couples represents a puzzle for welfare economics. We investigate whether political economy forces can explain its persistence. We develop sufficient statistics to determine whether a reform towards individual taxation would garner majority support and apply this...

How much does society value redistribution? The common method to derive inverse-optimum welfare weights is by inverting an optimal-tax model. Our alternative imposes fewer restrictions on labor supply and enables comparisons across household types. We use a structural labor supply model to...

We develop a theory of tax reforms for a setting with multi-dimensional heterogeneity amongst taxpayers and multiple economic decisions that are all subject to fixed and variable costs. The theorems in this paper provide a complete characterization of the conditions under which Pareto- or...

In practice, both pre- and after-tax performance measures are used to incentivize managers. In this paper, we analyze the optimality of these performance measures in an agency setting, assuming that both the principal and the agent face tax base risks. Switching from a pre-tax to an after-tax...

We develop a theory of tax reforms for a setting with multi-dimensional heterogeneity amongst taxpayers and multiple economic decisions that are all subject to fixed and variable costs. The theorems in this paper provide a complete characterization of the conditions under which Pareto- or...

This paper refines the concept of disposable income by incorporating governmentprovided in-kind benefits for education and health services, as well as imputed VAT payments, following Figari and Paulus (2015). Our analysis reveals that including these elements significantly reduces income...

How much does society value redistribution? The common method to derive inverse-optimum welfare weights is by inverting an optimal-tax model. Our alternative imposes fewer restrictions on labor supply and enables comparisons across household types. We use a structural labor supply model to...

We study the optimal taxation of expenditures that generate income while also serving a consumption function. We characterize the Pareto optimal income tax deduction for such mixed-purpose expenditures within a generalized Atkinson-Stiglitz model. Pareto optimality requires a partial deduction...

This paper characterises optimal taxation when rates of return are affected by effort, ability, and financial advice. When the government observes wealth and capital income, the optimal marginal tax rate on capital income is positive, whereas the rate on wealth is negative in the baseline model....

Should climate policy rely on a price of Carbon that is uniform across sectors? This paper studies this question from a public finance perspective. It is found that a justification for a uniform price can be given, but it relies on strong assumptions, among them indifference with respect to the...

A uniform price for carbon is at the center of market-based approaches to climate policy. Actual climate policy, by contrast, has many sector-specific rules. This paper studies the desirability of the market-based approach using tools from the theory of taxation. It is found that a justification...

This paper studies optimal taxation of income and education when employers cannot observe workers' productivity and workers signal their productivity to firms by choosing both quantity and quality of education. We characterize constrained efficient allocations and derive conditions under which...

I investigate numerically the following question: Given that individuals with different wages disagree over the optimal labour-income tax schedule, how would such disagreements be affected if society restricted itself to using linear tax schedules? I find that there would be (i) a decrease in...

Over the last decades, the United States has experienced a large increase in, both, income inequality and living standards. The workhorse models of optimal income taxation call for more redistribution as inequality rises. By contrast, living standards play no role for taxes and transfers in...

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for analyzing the revenue, efficiency and social welfare implications of top income taxation. It generalizes the Saez (2001) formula for the optimal top tax rate by deriving analytical expressions for the Laffer curve and excess burden. Applied to...