This paper explores how to optimally set tax and transfers when taxation authorities : (1) are uninformed about individuals’ value of time in both market and non-market activities and (2) can observe both market-income and time allocated to market employment. In contrast to much of the optimal...

This paper explores how to optimally set tax and transfers when taxation authorities : (1) are uninformed about individuals’ value of time in both market and non-market activities and (2) can observe both market-income and time allocated to market employment. We show that optimal...

This paper explores how to optimally set tax and transfers when taxation authorities : (1) are uninformed about individuals’ value of time in both market and non-market activities and (2) can observe both market-income and time allocated to market employment. In contrast to much of the optimal...

This paper proposes a general framework for analyzing commodity tax competition under destination and origin principles, based on three possible tax spillovers, the consumer price spillover, the producer price/terms of trade spillover, and rent spillovers. A model is presented which can be...

We consider a setting in which capital taxation is characterized by two distortions working in opposite directions. On one hand, governments engage in tax competition and are tempted to lower capital tax rates. On the other hand, they are unable to commit to future policies and, once capital has...

This paper examines the role of international tax evasion for the choice of an optimal foreign tax credit by a capital exporting region. Since a foreign tax credit raises the opportunity cost of concealing foreign source income, it can be employed to discourage evasion activity. The existence of...

It has realized since Pigou (1947) that if public goods are financed by distortionary taxation, the marginal social cost of providing the public good will exceed the actual resource cost by the marginal deadweight cost of taxation.

We study the link between second-best production efficiency and the constraints on income distribution imposed by private ownership of firms in economies with Ramsey taxation. We review the result of Dasgupta and Stiglitz [1972], Mirrlees [1972], Hahn [1973], and Sadka [1977] about firm-specific...

This paper establishes the generic size and structure of the second-best Pareto frontier and its various components in private ownership economies with Ramsey taxation. It provides conditions under which the second-best Pareto frontier of an economy with H consumers will have the expected...

Almost unknown in 1960, the value added tax (VAT) is now found in more than 130 countries, raises around 20 percent of the world’s tax revenue, and has been the centerpiece of tax reform in many developing countries. This paper explores the causes and consequences of the remarkable rise of the...