This paper compares the welfare effects of ad valorem and per unit commodity taxation, in a model of oligopolistic interaction. Our main result is that, when the number of consumers is sufficiently high, per unit taxes welfare dominate ad valorem taxes.

We develop a model of commodity tax competition with monopolistically competitive internationally mobile firms, transport costs, and asymmetric country sizes. We investigate the impacts of non-cooperative tax setting, as well as of tax harmonization and changes in the tax principle, in both the...

This paper studies commodity taxation when firms use two-part tariffs in model of competition A la Hotelling. Three kinds of taxes are considered: a specific tax, an ad valorem one on the subscription fee and an ad valorem one on the per usage fee. We first derive the equilibrium tariffs, market...

This paper studies the role of family size in the design of optimal income taxation. We consider a second best setting where the government observes the number of children and the income of the parents but not their productivity.

This paper compares the welfare effects of ad valorem and per unit commodity taxation, in a model of oligopolistic interaction. Our main result is that, when the number of consumers is sufficiently high, per unit taxes welfare dominate ad valorem taxes.

This paper extends the Atkinson-Stiglitz model of direct and indirect taxation to a dynamic setting with two unobservable characteristics: productive ability and inherited wealth.Bequests are motivated by the "joy of giving".

This paper studies the incidence of tax-transfer policy in a growth model wherein individuals differ according to their level of intergenerational altruism and have an endogenous labor supply. The main results is that public debt is neutral at the macro level but redistributes resources from...

This paper studies the optimal direct/indirect tax mix in a setting where individuals differ in several unobservable characteristics (productivity and endowments). Tax instruments (income and commodity taxes) are constrained solely by the information structure.

We study labor market competition with heterogeneous firms and consumers. Worker types are continuously distributed within the population and a finite number of firms have specific skill requirements. Specific human capital investment is the cost of training a worker to be able to work for a...

We investigate the balanced growth effects of pension plans on the rate of growth and on equalityin a closed economy where individual decisions about education are the engine of growth. We distinguish between pay-as-you-go and fully-funded pension systems and differentiate between three...