We study the importance of uncertainty and public finance to the welfare ranking of three environmental policy instruments: pollution taxes, pollution permits and Kyoto-like numerical rules for emissions. The setup is the basic stochastic neoclassical growth model augmented with the assumptions...

In a partial equilibrium setting without price uncertainty, the balanced-budget substitution of an ad valorem tax on output for a specific (unit) tax can enhance welfare in imperfectly competitive markets and is without impact in a competitive world. This paper demonstrates that a substitution...

Common integrated assessment models produce the counterintuitive result that higher risk aversion does not lead to stronger near-term abatement. This paper re-examines this result with a DICE model that is fully coupled with a thermohaline circulation model. It also features Epstein-Zin utility...

The paper reexamines the welfare economics of intergenerational risk. Risk and its resolution over time are modeled as a decision tree: in each period, the consumption of the current one-period living generation is to be traded-off against uncertain benefits of future generations; as time...

We study optimal nonlinear income taxation when earnings can differ because of both ability and luck, so the income tax has both a redistributive role and an insurance role. A substantial literature on optimal redistribution in the absence of uncertainty has evolved since Mirrlees' original...

Applying a framework of perfect competition under uncertainty, we contribute to the discussion of whether or not ad valorem taxes and specific taxes are equivalent. While this equivalence holds without price uncertainty, we show that ad valorem taxes and specific taxes are “almost never”...

We study a large economy model in which individuals have private information about their productive abilities and their preferences. Moreover, there is aggregate uncertainty so that the social benefits from taxation and public goods provision are a priori unknown. The analysis is based on a...

This paper shows that the combination of habit formation - present consumption creating additional consumption needs in the future - and myopia may explain why some retirees are forced to 'unretire', i.e., unexpectedly return to work. It also shows that when myopia about habit formation leads to...

The growing dissatisfaction with perceived distributional inequality and budgetary constraints gave rise to a discussion on the (re-)introduction of wealth taxes. Wealth taxes are typically levied on private wealth, in some countries also on corporate wealth. To avoid misleading statements...

We analyze optimal taxation of labor and capital income in a life-cycle framework with idiosyncratic income risk. We provide a novel decomposition of labor income tax formulas into a redistribution and an insurance component. The latter is independent of the social welfare function and...