Empirical evidence suggests that people dislike ads in media products like TV programs. In such situations standard economic theory prescribes that the advertising volume can be optimally reduced by levying a tax on ads. However, making use of recent advances in the theory of Industrial...

Digital media goods and digital media platforms exhibit cost structures and network effects that imply that price and quantity effects of consumption taxes are qualitatively different compared to what we typically find for physical goods. For instance, in most European countries and US states,...

An increasing international applicability of a given type of education encourages students to invest more effort when studying. Governments, on the other hand, face an incentive to divert the provision of public education away from internationally applicable education toward country-specific...

A relatively high labor-intensity in government-run entities need not imply slack in their organization. Rather, it is a rational reaction to various forms of wage tax advantage that the public sector has over private firms. Even though an unequal tax treatment of public and private sectors...

The World Health Organization has advocated the earmarking of health-related taxes to mobilize revenues to be spent on public health spending. While there are certain advantages and disadvantages in the use of earmarked taxes to fund healthcare, its ability to mobilize revenues will depend on...