This paper investigates the relationship between electoral incentives, institutions and corruption. We assume that voters use a yardstick criterion. The incumbent provides a public good and extracts rent, which are financed by imposing a distortionary tax. We demonstrate the possibility that...

Given its significance in practice, the piecewise linear tax system seems to have received disproportionately little attention in the literature on optimal income taxation. This paper offers a simple and transparent analysis of its main characteristics.

This paper examines how trade liberalization affects the innovation incentives of firms, and what this implies for industry productivity. For this purpose we develop a reciprocal dumping model of international trade with heterogeneous firms and endogenous R&D. Among the robust results that hold...

We formulate a dynamic game model of trade in an exhaustible resource with a quantity-setting cartel. We compute the feedback Nash equilibrium and two Stackelberg equilibria under two different leadership scenarios: leadership by the strategic importing country, and leadership by the exporting...

We propose a new criterion which reflects both the concern for welfare (utility) and the concern for rights in the evaluation of economic development paths. The concern for rights is captured by a pre-ordering over combinations of thresholds (floors or ceilings on various quantitative...

We consider the evolution of preferences when trade occurs between two countries. We show that if one country is much larger than the other, its preferences can eventually take over the preferences of the second country. This result may provide an explanation of why small countries sometimes...

We study the role of tax share and transparency of governance on growth and stagnation. A local government maximizes its private benefits using two activities. The first one consists of providing local public goods that help local firms to increase profits, thus enlarging tax revenue. The second...