This paper examines the role of nonlinear pricing by public (or regulated) utilities as a redistributive mechanism in presence of an optimal nonlinear income tax. It models an economy with many types of persons who differ in two unobservable characteristics (earning abilities and tastes). We...

This paper examines the optimal tax design problem in the presence of wage uncertainty. The wage has a continuous distribution, individuals are ex ante identical, preferences are separable in labor supply and goods, public policy aims at providing the population with social insurance, and the...

This paper studies the problem of optimal taxation of commodities when consumption is a time-consuming activity. This is done under two distinct preference separability assumptions: between goods and labor supply, and between goods and leisure. It argues that with the labor separability, the...

This paper considers a Mirrleesian optimal income tax model wherein labor inputs are not perfect substitutes and their wages are determined endogenously. It shows: (i) If skilled and unskilled workers are Edgeworth complements, skilled workers will necessarily face a marginal subsidy and...

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...

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...