This paper discusses the merits of wealth transfer taxation on both efficiency and equity grounds. It first deals with the popular debate that is dominated by American economists. This debate concerns the US estate tax, which is one, among many, types of wealth transfer tax. After addressing the...

This paper proposes a simple OLG model which is consistent with the essential facts about consumer behavior, capital accumulation and wealth distribution, and yields some new and surprising conclusions about fiscal policy. By considering a society in which individuals are distinguished according...

This paper combines two strands of the literature on inequality and distribution issues: the classical approach, which insists on the division of society into classes characterized by different saving propensities, and the social conflict approach, which considers that inequality inflicts direct...

The achievements and limitations of the classical theory of optimal labor-income taxation based on social welfare functions are now well known, although utilitarianism still dominates public economics. We review the recent interest that has arisen for broadening the normative approach and making...

This paper studies how congestion in the public health sector can be used as a redistributive tool. In our model, agents differ in income and they can obtain a health service either from a congested public hospital or from a non congested private one at a higher price. With pure in-kind...

Long term care (LTC) is mainly provided by the family and subsidiarily by the market and the government. To understand the role of these three institutions it is important to understand the motives and the working of family solidarity. In this paper we focus on the case when LTC is provided by...

This paper investigates the optimal taxation path of a non-renewable resource in the presence of an imperfect substitute renewable resource. We present an optimal growth model and characterize the social optimum and the decentralized equilibrium. We show that the economy gradually reduces the...

In this paper we demonstrate that even if policies prior to reform have been rational, it is possible, in fact in certain policy areas likely, that a green tax reform, contrary to the perceived wisdom among economists, will be associated with a double-dividend, i.e. with both environmental and...

Policy analysis in applied fields such as agricultural, trade, environmental and development policy is still often undertaken within a first-best, rather than a more realistic second-best framework. The present paper seeks to contribute to changing this state of affairs by providing an intuitive...

We study the optimal taxation problem in an economy composed of two-person households (men and women), where agents influence their own old-age dependency prospects through health spending. It is shown that the utilitarian social optimum can be decentralized by means of lump sum transfers from...