We study the optimal taxation of risk-free and excess capital income with heterogeneous rates of return, alongside an optimal nonlinear earnings tax. Households can hold three assets: one risk-free, one risky but diversifiable, and one a private investment with idiosyncratic risk whose expected...

There is increasing empirical evidence that people systematically differ in their rates of return on capital. We derive optimal non-linear taxes on labor and capital income in the presence of such return heterogeneity. We allow for two distinct reasons why returns are heterogeneous: because...

We analyze the optimal nonlinear income tax schedule when taxpayers earn multiple incomes and differ along many unobserved dimensions. We derive the necessary conditions for the government's optimum using both a tax perturbation and a mechanism design approach, and show that both methods produce...

I characterize the optimal linear commodity taxes when households differ in multiple characteristics, in presence of an optimal non-linear tax schedule on the households' labour incomes. The optimal distortions caused by a linear commodity tax are larger if, conditional on labour income, more...

This paper examines the relationship between entrepreneurship (as measured by fluctuations in the business ownership rate) and unemployment in Japan for the period between 1972 and 2002. We find that, although Japan’s unemployment rate has been influenced by specific exogenous shocks, the...

This paper deals with the influence of cultural attitudes towards uncertainty on the level of businessownership across countries. First, the concepts of uncertainty and risk are elaborated, as well as theirrelevance for entrepreneurship. Second, cross-sectional regression analysis using data for...

Job satisfaction of self-employed and paid-employed workers is analyzed using the European Community Household Panel for the EU-15 covering the years 1994-2001. We distinguish between two types of job satisfaction, i.e. job satisfaction in terms of type of work and job satisfaction in terms of...