This paper points to the important role which the elasticity of aggregate capital supply with respect to the net rate of return to capital plays for the efficiency of policymaking in a decentralized economy with mobile capital and spillovers among jurisdictions. In accordance with previous...

The loss of international competitiveness of domestic industries remains a key obstacle to the implementation of effective carbon prices in a world without harmonized climate policies. We analyze countries' non-cooperative choices of emissions taxes under imperfect competition and mobile...

This paper contributes to resolving the puzzle that in practice most countries use ad valorem (corporate income) taxation, while a large part of the tax competition literature views business taxes as unit (wealth) taxation. We point to the dual role corporate taxation plays in attracting mobile...

This paper shows that if an individual's health costs are U-shaped in weight with a minimum at some healthy weight level and if the individual has both self control problems and rational motives for over- or underweight, the optimal paternalistic tax on unhealthy food mitigates the individual's...

This paper develops a theoretical explanation why it may be optimal for higher-level governments to pay categorical block grants or closed-ended matching grants to local governments. We consider a federation with two types of local governments which differ in the cost of providing public goods....

Empirical evidence from the U.S. and the European Union suggests that regions which contribute to interregional redistribution face weaker borrowing constraints than regions which benefit from interregional redistribution. This paper presents an argument in favor of such differentiated budgetary...

This paper analyzes the optimal level of public debt when taxes are used not only for funding public expenditures but also for correcting externalities from climate change. Taking into account externalities implies that the optimal policy deviates from tax smoothing. Provided cumulative marginal...

This paper provides a new foundation of soft drink taxation. We abstract from externalities and internalities previously used to justify such taxation and, instead, emphasize that neither explicit nor implicit markets and prices for sugar content can be expected to emerge. Hence, in the absence...

This paper addresses the question whether taxes on unhealthy food are suitable for internalizing intergenerational externalities inflicted by parents when they decide on their children's diet. Within an OLG model with an imperfectly altruistic parent, the optimal steady state tax rate on...