This paper studies the impact of redistributive income taxation in a society where only <i>some</i> individuals are motivated by relative consumption concerns. Introducing this heterogeneity raises theoretical challenges since (i) earned income becomes an imperfect indicator of underlying ability and...

We present a survey of key results from second-best optimal redistribution theory and their implications for tax-transfer policy. The core results include the Corlett-Hague theorem, the Deaton conditions, the production-efficiency theorem, the Atkinson-Stiglitz theorem, and the Mirrlees-Saez...

Foreign investments of multinational firms are often complex in that they involve conduit entities. In particular, a multinational can pursue either a direct or an indirect investment strategy, where the latter involves an intermediate corporate entity and is associated with enhanced...

Without a broad international agreement, climate policy is less effective, owing to carbon leakage. We investigate whether this negative effect can be addressed by partially containing the policy's effects to intermediate goods sectors, such as electricity or transportation services. We use a...

We analyze the role of National Treatment in the regulation of environmental product standards for an open economy. A social planner uses product standards to control emissions from the consumption of a traded good. We show that whether National Treatment of standards interferes with...

A local measure of classical horizontal inequity (HI) in an income tax or tax-benefit system is proposed and aggregated into a global index. This index expresses the revenue gain per capita that would come from eliminating HI welfare-neutrally, and also reveals the loss of vertical performance,...

With the standard non-linear income taxation framework with heterogeneity of preferences, in this paper the optimality of workfare as a screening tool is examined. It is assumed that workfare does not serve as a human capital investment, participation is mandatory, and administrative costs are...

A pure public good is provided by the government and the voluntary contributions of two types of households. The government finances its contribution by means of income taxation. The latter has distortionary effects. A third type of household never makes contributions. We analyse the effects of...

We investigate airport peak-load pricing using a vertical structure of airport and airlines. We find that a profit-maximizing airport would charge higher peak and off-peak runway prices and a higher peak/off-peak price differential than a public airport. Consequently, airport privatization would...

This paper investigates the signalling role of tax policy in promoting, or hindering, the ability of a monopolist to practise entry deterrence. We show that environmental policy can facilitate the incumbent firm's concealment of information from potential entrants, thus deterring entry, and yet...