Using a collective model of consumption, we characterize optimal commodity taxes aimed at targeting specific individuals within the household. The main message is that distortionary indirect taxation can circumvent the agency problem of the household. Essentially, taxation should discourage less...

Empirical models of labour supply adopting the collective approach have commonly used the decentralized representation and a reduced form specification of the sharing rule. This procedure has two crucial drawbacks that in principle make it inappropriate for the very same type of applications...

The assumption that household income is strongly and positively correlated with a household's real standard of living provides the basis for the joint taxation of families, which has the effect of discriminating against married women as second earners. This paper shows, in the context of a model...

The Mirrlees Review of the UK tax system, together with its companion volume of research papers, can be expected to influence future discussions of tax reform. Indeed, this can already be recognised in the Henry Review. As far as income taxation is concerned, the most substantive recommendation...

This paper presents for the first time the properties of optimal piecewise linear tax systems for two-earner households, based on joint and individual incomes respectively. A key contribution is the analysis of the interaction of second earner wage differences, variation in prices of bought-in...

This paper applies the theory of relational contracts to make precise the idea that because households are engaged in a repeated non-cooperative game, Pareto efficient outcomes can be supported by self interest, given the specific pattern of specialisation and exchange which exists in the...

We consider a case where some of the parents have higher ability to raise children than others. First-best policy gives both types of parents the same level of utility. If parental actions are not fully observable, however, the policy maker has to take into account the incentive-compatibility...

The conventional view is that Americans work longer hours than Germans and other Europeans but when time in household production is included, overall working time is very similar on both sides of the Atlantic. Americans spend more time on market work but German invest more in household...

This paper extends the standard model of life cycle consumption, saving and labor supply in a number of directions. First, it argues that consumption should be defined as expenditure on household production as well as on market goods, that is, we are interested in life cycle profiles of full...

This paper combines income and expenditure with time use data to provide a unique picture of the time paths of labour supplies, saving and full consumption for two-adult households over the life cycle. These data are used to test the life cycle model presented in the paper, at the core of which...