We consider a general economy, where agents have private information about their types. Types can be multi-dimensional and potentially interdependent. We show that, if the interim distribution of types is common knowledge (the exact number of agents for each type is known), then a mechanism...

Several studies show cases where the Samuelson rule holds, or where the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) equals one within optimized tax systems. The conditions for the original Samuelson rule to hold in these studies are quite restrictive, and MCF measures employed are not consistent with...

A collective decision problem is described by a set of agents, a profile of single-peaked preferences over the real line and a number k of public facilities to be located. We consider public facilities that do not suffer from congestion and are non-excludable. We provide a characterization of...

This paper presents an institutional analysis of the underlying factors affecting the performance of drinking-water community organizations in rural areas of Costa Rica. These organizations provide water to more than 60 percent of the total rural population. There is, however, a great disparity...

A tax on fuel combined with tax-exemptions or subsidies for purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles is implemented in many countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other negative externalities from road traffic. This study, however, shows that a tax on fuel should be combined with heavier...

A recent study of the welfare state in Sweden, Rosen (1995, 1996, 1997), concludes that child care subsidies may lead to substantial deadweight losses that may impede economic growth and the future of the welfare state. In this article we show that the deadweight losses are highly sensitive to...

This paper examines the effect of taxes on the individuals' choices of educational direction, and thus on the economy's skill composition. A proportional labour income tax induces too many workers with high innate ability to choose an educational type with high consumption value and low effort...

The purpose of this paper is to present an exercise where we identify optimal income tax rules under the constraint of fixed tax revenue. To this end, we estimate a microeconomic model with 78 parameters that capture heterogeneity in consumption-leisure preferences for singles and couples as...

This article explores whether altruistic preferences toward households in poor high-temperature countries stimulate global warming policies within rich low-temperature countries that avoids damage from global warming. The article analyzes optimal carbon taxes on commodities within such rich...

A tax on fuel combined with tax exemptions or subsidies for fuel-efficient vehicles is implemented in many countries to fulfill the Paris agreement and to curb mileage-related externalities from road traffic. The present study shows that a tax on fuel should be combined with heavier taxation of...