This paper shows that taxes which are understood to be neutral with respect to the marginal investment decisions may be distortionary with respect to entrepreneurial decisions. In particular, we apply an intertemporal model to show that a comprehensive income tax is distortionary unless all...

We view the entrepreneur as an agent who possesses human capital in the form of specific skills or talents. When she starts a firm, her human capital is essential to the firm and it has substantial private value. The entrepreneur transforms her human capital over time into what we call...

Small businesses tend to be owned by wealthy households. Such entrepreneur households also own a large share of U.S. stock market wealth. Fluctuations in entrepreneurs' hunger for risk could therefore help explain time variation in the equity premium. The paper suggests an entrepreneurial...

This paper presents a simple, basic model to compute the welfare consequences of the introduction of a tariff on the CO2 content of imported goods in a country that already imposes a domestic carbon tax. The main finding is that the introduction of a carbon import tariff increases global welfare...

The well known Pareto criterion used in the context of efficiency and welfare has to do with absolute changes whereas in every domain of economic behaviour inequality or relative changes has become a major concern. We propose an inequality-preserving or distribution neutral Pareto criterion-the...

We study the association between resource rents and political stability, highlighting the importance of the distribution of political power as a mediating factor. We present a simple theoretical model showing that increased rents are likely to be positively associated with the stability of a...