The merits of capital levies depend on the likelihood of repetition, the extent of anticipation, and its effects on distribution. The relevance of these features, which in varying degrees is underdeveloped or underappreciated in pertinent literatures, is elaborated and then considered with...

A substantial literature addresses the design of transfer programs and policies, including the negative income tax, other means-tested transfers, the earned income tax credit, categorical assistance, and work inducements. This work is largely independent of that on the optimal nonlinear income...

Competition law's prohibition on price fixing and related horizontal agreements is one of its few uncontroversial provisions and is understood to be well grounded in economic principles that are taken to provide the foundation for competition policy. Upon examination, however, commonly offered...

This article examines optimal policy toward coordinated oligopolistic price elevation. First, it analyzes the social welfare implications of enforcement, elaborating the value of deterrence and the nature of possible chilling effects. Then, it explores a variety of means of detection, with...

This Handbook entry presents a conceptual, normative overview of the subject oftaxation. It emphasizes the relationships among the main functions of taxation - notably, raisingrevenue, redistributing income, and correcting externalities - and the mapping between thesefunctions and various forms...

A substantial literature examines second-best environmental policy, focusing particularly on how the Pigouvian directive that marginal taxes should equal marginal external harms needs to be modified in light of the preexisting distortion due to labor income taxation. Additional literature is...

Ever since Corlett and Hague (1953), it has been understood that it tends to be optimal on second-best grounds to (relatively) tax complements to leisure and subsidize substitutes because doing so helps to offset the distorting effect of taxation on labor supply. Yet in the context of...

Optimal policy rules - including those regarding income taxation, commodity taxation, public goods, and externalities - are typically derived in models with homogeneous preferences. This article reconsiders many central results for the case in which preferences for commodities, public goods, and...

In competition law, market power requirements are often articulated in terms of market shares. The use of market share thresholds, however, conflates two distinct questions: (1) How much market power exists in a given situation? (2) How much market power should the law require? As a consequence,...