We provide an analytical overview of the distortionary effects of some common forms of taxes faced by the nonrenewable resources sector of the economy. In the category of taxes meant specifically to capture the resource rent, we look at a specific severance tax, an ad valorem severance tax, a...

We compute the optimal non-linear tax policy for a dynastic economy with uninsurable risk, where generations are linked by dynastic wealth accumulation and correlated incomes. Unlike earlier studies, we find that the optimal long-run tax policy is moderately regressive. Regressive taxes lead to...

This paper examines empirically the effects of distortionary taxation on labor supply using a general equilibrium framework. The long-term relations predicted by the model are derived and tested using Canadian data between 1966 and 1993. While the cointegrating predictions of the model without...

A group of agents participate in a cooperative enterprise producing a single good. Each participant contributes a particular type of input; output is nondecreasing in these contributions. How should it be shared? We analyze the implications of the axiom of Group Monotonicity: if a group of...

We study the problem of defining inequality-averse social orderings over the space of allocations in a multi-commodity environment where individuals differ only in their preferences. We formulate notions of egalitarianism based on the axiom that any dominance between the consumption bundles of...

In this paper, we present graphical and quantitative evidence on the important role played by changes in labor market institutions on the rise in wage inequality in the United States during the 1980s. We show that the decline in the real value of the minimium wage and in the rate of unionization...

We study a simple model of assigning indivisible objects (e.g., houses, jobs, offices, etc.) to agents. Each agent receives at most one object and monetary compensations are not possible. We completely describe all rules satisfying efficiency and resource-monotonicity. The characterized rules...

We propose two axiomatic theories of cost sharing with the common premise that agents demand comparable -though perhaps different- commodities and are responsible for their own demand. Under partial responsibility the agents are not responsible for the asymmetries of the cost function: two...

The goal of this paper is to contribute to the economic literature on ethnic and cultural diversity by proposing a new index that is informationally richer and more flexible than the commonly used ‘ethno-linguistic fractionalization’ (ELF) index. We characterize a measure of diversity among...

We study the simple model of assigning indivisible and heterogenous objects (e.g., houses, jobs, offices, etc.) to agents. Each agent receives at most one object and monetary compensations are not possible. For this model, known as the house allocation model, we characterize the class of rules...