The paper reviews the theory of environmental taxation under first best and second best conditions. It argues that negative environmental externalities lead to reductions of the provision of public goods, while investment in abatement increases the supply of public goods. Together with optimal...

This paper considers economists’ treatment of problems related to the environment prior to the establishment of environmental economics as a separate field in the 1960s. In discussing the literature from the late 18th century onwards, it looks on the one hand for awareness in the work of the...

The paper considers the history of theories of income distribution, from the time of Adam Smith until the 1970s. It is divided into two main parts. Part I considers the positive theory of income distribution, beginning with the classical economists’ analysis of the functional distribution of...

In his Wealth of Nations (1776) Adam Smith created an agenda for the study of the economy that is reflected in the structure of modern economics. This paper describes Smith’s contributions to four central areas of economic theory: The theory of price formation, the relationship between market...

We investigate whether women search longer for a job than men and whether these differences change over the life cycle. Our empirical analysis exploits German register data on highly attached displaced workers. We apply duration models to analyze gender differences in job search taking into...

In this paper we compare the profitability of a merger to the pro…tability of a partial ownership arrangement and …nd that partial ownership arrangements can be more profiable for the acquiring and acquired firm because they can result in a greater dampening of competition. We also derive...

Differences in individual wealth holdings are widely viewed as a driving force of economic inequality. However, as this finding relies on cross-section data, a concern is that one confuses older with wealthier. We propose a new method to adjust for age effects in cross-sections, which eliminates...

A common approach to merger simulations used in antitrust cases is to calibrate demand from market shares and a few additional parameters. When the products involved in the merger case are differentiated along several dimensions, the resulting diversion ratios may be very different from those...

This paper characterizes the optimal income taxation when individuals respond along both the intensive and extensive margins. Individuals are heterogeneous in two dimensions: their skills and their disutility of participation. Preferences over consumption and work effort can differ with the...

In this paper we develop a framework for studying tax competition and local public goods supply in a setting where real and fiscal externalities interact with local democracy. We use the framework (a) to analyse if there is any reason to believe that local autonomy generally will give a tax race...