The Atkinson-Stiglitz Theorem states that if labor is weakly separable from goods in household utility functions, differential commodity taxation should not be not part of an optimal redistributive tax system. This Theorem, which is arguable the most policy-relevant result to come out of the...

An optimal commodity tax approach is taken to compare trade taxes and VATs when some commodities are produced informally. Trade taxes apply to all imports and exports, including intermediate goods while the VAT applies only to sales by the formal sector and imports. The VAT can achieve...

This paper derives optimal commodity taxes in a two-class economy, based on Chaudhuri (1986) and Diamantaras and Thomson's (1990) λ-equitability. An allocation is λ-equitable if no agent envies a proportion λ of the bundle of any other agent. We examine the properties of Pareto undominated...

This paper studies the optimal commodity taxation problem when time taken in consumption is a perfect substitute for either labor or leisure. It shows that while labor substitutability affects the optimal tax structure, leisure substitutability leaves the classical optimal tax results intact. In...