Stackelberg differential games are useful settings in which optimal government policies can be studied. This paper argues that the analysis of these games involves a key technical issue. In particular, we question the necessity for optimality of one boundary condition invoked in existing...

Optimal tax policies in dynamic models have unappealing features. In particular, optimal tax reform typically involves a large initial accumulation of government assets which is responsible for a large part of the welfare gains from optimal tax reform. In this paper, we investigate the...

This paper studies the design of tax systems that implement a planner's second-best allocation in a market economy. An example shows that the widely used Mirrleesian (1976) tax system cannot implement all incentive-compatible allocations. Hammond's (1979) "principle of taxation" proves that any...

We analyse welfare effects of the interactions between the tax system and inflation in Poland and in Ukraine, using the framework developed by Feldstein (1997, 1999). This approach stresses the fact that inflation increases distortions created by the tax system, in particular distortions to...

This discussion paper led to a publication in <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292111000912">'European Economic Review'</A>, 56(2) 216-32.<P>This paper is concerned with a policy oriented macroeconomic experiment involving an 'international' economy with a relatively small 'home' country and a large 'foreign' country. It compares the economic...</p></a>

This paper is concerned with a policy oriented macroeconomic experiment involving an 'international' economy with a relatively small 'home' country and a large 'foreign' country. It compares the economic performance of two alternative tax systems as a means to finance unemployment benefits: a...

This paper studies the effects of distortionary taxes and public investment in an endogenous growth OLG model with knowledge transmission. Fiscal policy affects growth in two respects: First, work time reacts to variations of prospective tax rates and modifies knowledge formation; second, public...

We consider equilibrium and optimum use of a Vickrey road bottleneck, distinguishing between long-run and short-run scheduling preferences in an otherwise stylized scheduling model. The preference structure reflects that there is a distinction between the (exogenous) 'long-run preferred arrival...

The European Commission favours the introduction of a consolidated corporate tax base to overcome the distortions arising from the existing system of separate accounting. The blueprints for consolidation are simulated with the applied general equilibrium model CORTAX. We show that the benefits...

This paper investigates optimal airport pricing when airlines provide imperfect substitutes products, and make decisions on capacity, scheduling and pricing. We show that the first-best toll per flight may be higher than the simple market-shares formulae that were recently derived for Cournot...