See Birmingham Discussion Paper 05-19 (December 2005) for current version.

We study extinction in a commons problem in which agents have access to capital markets. When the commons grows more quickly than the interest rate, multiple equilibria are found for intermediate commons endowments. In one of these, welfare decreases as the resource becomes more abundant, a...

The paper studies optimal redistributive taxation when the government cannot commit the future policy. The framework used is one in which individuals can revise their consumption-savings decisions slightly more often than the government can change tax policy.

The paper gives a systematic treatment of equivalent tax systems within an intertemporal framework.

The paper provides a theory where the size of the inspection authority and the size of the fines evolve endogenously. We find that if a society cannot commit to future taxes it may gain form committing to a small Inland Revenue Service and small punishments for tax evasion. The possibility of...

We explore a dynamic commons problem and assess the welfare consequences of access to capital markets. The commons has a high intrinsic rate of return but its fruits cannot be secured by individual agents. Capital market access allows resources to be held securely and intertemporally...

We study extinction in a commons problem in which agents have access to capital markets. When the commons grows more quickly than the interest rate, multiple equilibria are found for intermediate commons endowments. In one of these, welfare decreases as the resource becomes more abundant, a `re-...

We study dominant strategy implementation in a variant of the canonical public good provision model, as proposed by Borgers and Postl (2009). In this set up, we fully characterize the set of budget-balanced dominant strategy deterministric mechanisms, which are simple threshold rules. For...

We study strategy-proof decision rules in the variants of the canonical public good model proposed by Borgers and Postl (2009). In this setup, we fully characterize the set of budget-balanced strategy-proof deterministic mechanisms, which are simple threshold rules. For smooth probabilistic...

We study procurement procedures that simultaneously determine specification and price of a good. Suppliers can offer and produce the good in either of two possible specifications, both of which are equally good for the buyer. Production costs are interdependent and unknown at the time of...