This paper analyses the reaction of fiscal policy to the cycle in OECD countries. The results suggest that while overall government balances were counter-cyclical in the past and more so in economic downturns than in upswings, discretionary fiscal policy was neutral on average. However,...

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...

Advances in information technology have improved the administrative feasibility of redistribution based on lifetime earnings recorded at the time of retirement. We study optimal lifetime income taxation and social insurance in an economy in which redistributive taxation and social insurance...

We show in a two-period world with endogenous savings and two assets, one of them exhibiting a stochastic return, that an interest-adjusted income tax is optimal. This tax leaves a riskless component of interest income tax free and taxes the excess return with a special tax rate. There is no...

The paper surveys some main results in the theory of capital income taxation in the open economy; reviews recent trends in international taxation, and discusses alternative blueprints for fundamental capital income tax reform from the perspective of an open economy faced with growing mobility of...

An economy with clean and dirty intermediate inputs may fall into a trap characterized by low environmental quality and low life expectancy, while the others converge to opposite steady states. We propose new strategies towards sustainable growth. They include: (i) taxes (subsidies) imposed on...

We investigate how the optimal nonlinear income tax schedule is modified when taxpayers can evade taxation by emigrating. We consider two symmetric countries with Maximin governments. Workers choose their labor supply along the intensive margin. The skill distribution is continuous, and, for...

The Ramsey tax problem examines the design of linear commodity taxes to collect a given tax revenue. This approach has been seriously challenged by Atkinson and Stiglitz (1976) who show that (under some conditions) an optimal income tax makes commodity taxes redundant. In the meantime, the...

According to the Globalization Paradox, globalization limits the freedom of choice for national governments. Capital mobility in particular induces tax competition, thus putting downward pressure on capital taxes. However, while capital mobility introduces the inefficiency of tax competition, it...

When the government lacks the ability to commit to a tax policy over time, agents’ involvement in imperfect financial markets can be welfare improving. Agents borrow against their promised income in markets that are incomplete in the sense that claims cannot be resold without loss. Taking...