This paper examines the properties of the optimal nonlinear income tax when preferences are quasi-linear in leisure and individuals differ in their ability and their preferences for leisure. The government seeks to redistribute income. It can perfectly observe the level of endogenous income but...

We study the design of education policies (subsidies and public education) when parents' investment in education is motivated by warm-glow altruism and determines the probability that a child has a high ability. The optimal subsidy is not necessarily positive. It is determined by two conflicting...

Most models of tax competition assume full employment. Yet, actually one often observes that fiscal competition, particularly when it is aimed at attracting investment, is motivated by the concern of fighting unemployment and enhancing job creation. The present paper considers a multicountry...

Assuming the government cannot fully observe either individual types or incomes and jointly picks optimal taxes and audit policies against evasion can significantly alter standard results from optimal income taxation and tax-evasion models, which treat these separately. We consider this when...

This paper studies the role of alternative pension systems that offer collective annuities. The defining characteristic of collective annuities is that they do not depend on an individual's survival probabilities. We show that such a system may be welfare improving (with a utilitarian social...

This paper studies the incidence of tax-transfer policy in a growth model wherein individuals differ according to their level of intergenerational altruism and have an endogenous labor supply. The main result is that public debt is neutral at the macro level but redistributes resources from...

This paper analyzes an overlapping generation (OLG) growth model wherein saving finances second period consumption and bequest-as-consumption. First, it looks at the market equilibrium and at the optimal solution; then it turns to the issue of decentralizing the optimal solution with various...