The present article generalyses economic litterature on consumption tax incidence to general forms of consumption taxes. Previous studies were limited to the cases of per unit and ad valorem taxes. Three main contributions are provided. From a methodological point of view, the elasticity of the...

This paper presents evidence from three French VAT reforms showing that tax shifting on prices operates differently upwards and downwards. This may appear as a paradox when reading usual studies on price shifting. This paper puts forward two different asymmetric effects. The first one is linked...

The paper starts from a proposition of institutional design for climate policies made previously by David Bradford and labelled GPGP (Global Public good Purchase). The scheme is compared with other possible post- Kyoto schemes that are, or not, "Kyoto compatible". The comparison puts the...

The point of this paper is to measure empirically the distribution of the commodity tax burden between consumers and producers. For that purpose, two French reforms are studied. These reforms are steep decreases of the VAT rate on housing repair services on the one hand, and on new car sales on...

This paper puts forward an explanation of the rapid increase in golden handshake provision in Europe over the last ten years, based on both enhanced investor protection and attractive tax codes for severance pay. This article takes up a framework in which asymmetric information about the quality...

There is a capital taxation puzzle in most developed countries. Since the 1960s, revenues from wealth transfer taxation have been especially low and decreasing as a percentage of GDP, even to the extent of disappearing in quite a number of cases; by contrast, lifetime wealth or capital taxation...

This paper examines how a government should intervene when agents make, for different reasons, choices that have long term detrimental effects on their survival prospects. We consider an economy where some agents make risky choices (here sin good consumption) out of myopia, and regret their...