As promotion of tourism changes preferences, and hence the utility function, the usual comparative static analysis is not appropriate. A comparison of utility levels with, and without, promotion has to be conducted with the same utility function. The choice of the utility function depends on...

The Chinese government has been active in trying to cool the alleged bubbles in its housing markets, especially in urban areas. This paper argues that the high housing prices are at least partly caused by some real factors, including the policy of restricting land uses, in particular the...

This paper develops a set of three models to study the optimal tax-subsidy regime in an economy characterised by two deviations from the perfect competition model – negative externality from pollution by the "dirty" industry, and increasing returns in the "clean" industry. Its main conclusions...

In this note, we introduce increasing returns to Bovenberg and Mooij's (1994) model as generalised in Fullerton (1997) and use an example to show that (1) even with a distortionary labor tax, the optimal environmental levy is greater than the Pigouvian rate; (2) the difference between tax on the...

This paper presents three simple models to study how prices, politics and persuasion may each play a role in environmental policymaking. Our conclusions are twofold. First, in the absence of increasing returns, requiring the polluting industry to purchase pollution permits can internalize the...