Tax earmarking imposes a constraint on government policymaking, and may be desirable if it solves a time-inconsistency problem in tax policy. In a two-period economy, in which the policy decisions regarding taxes, public goods provision, and pollution abatement are taken by a majority-elected...

We analyze individuals with heterogeneous time-inconsistent preferences that consume sin goods and make a savings decision. A government may tax the sin good and provide mandatory health insurance. Due to time-inconsistency, the individual sin good and savings choices in ict internalities. Due...

The obesity rate has grown to epidemic proportions in the United States. Recent scientific studies suggest that excess intake of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is one of the primary contributors to weight gain. One option to address the growing obesity epidemic is to discourage SSB consumption...

Traditionally, economists and tax theorists justify taxation by means of externalities. In recent years, both scholars and policymakers have begun advocating ‘sin taxes' on goods whose consumption causes ‘internalities': unaccounted-for costs that a person imposes on herself, not on others....

We analyse attempts to implement personalised regulation in the form of sin licenses (O'Donoghue and Rabin 2003, 2005, 2007) to correct the distortion in the consumption of a harmful good when consumers suffer from varying degrees of self-control problems. We take into account the possibility...

We consider a two-period model. In the first period, individuals consume two goods: one is sinful and the other is not. The sin good brings pleasure but has a detrimental effect on second period health and individuals tend to underestimate this effect. In the second period, individuals can...

I derive a simple closed-form formula for the optimal tax on addictive goods when consumers with hyperbolic time preferences erroneously and naïvely believe that they will go through with the consumption plan they devise in the present. In the literature, this problem is well studied for...