Showing 1 - 10 of 103
Will politics lead to over-building or under-building of transportation projects? In this paper, we develop a model of infrastructure policy in which politicians overdo things that have hidden costs and underperform tasks whose costs voters readily perceive. Consequently, national funding of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012949429
A recent wave of literature, partly motivated by presidential campaign tax reform plans, analyzes tax expenditure limitation proposals. These reforms are often advanced not only, or even primarily, because they reduce distortions caused by favoritism for some types of expenditures over others....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012981107
Does significant market power or the presence of large rents affect optimal income taxation, calling for greater redistribution due to tainted gains? Or perhaps less because of an additional wedge that distorts labor effort? Do concerns about inequality have implications for antitrust,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012891788
Anti-utilitarian norms often are used in assessing tax systems. Two motivations support this practice. First, many believe utilitarianism to be insufficiently egalitarian. Second, utilitarianism does not give independent weight to other equitable principles, notably concerns that reforms may...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013218523
A large body of literature is devoted to the measurement of income inequality, yet little attention is given to the question, Why measure inequality? However, the reasons for measurement bear importantly on whether and how measurement should be done. Upon examination, normative measures are...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013219965
When there are binding price controls, there are shortages and the allocation of goods across consumers may not be efficient. In general, the misallocation costs of price controls are first order, while the classic welfare losses due to undersupply are second order. This paper presents an...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013221092
People continue to live in many big American cities, because in those cities housing costs less than new construction. While cities may lose their productive edge, their houses remain and population falls only when housing depreciates. This paper presents a simple durable housing model of urban...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013221282
Self-reporting -- the reporting by parties of their own behavior to an enforcement authority -- is a commonly observed aspect of law enforcement, as in the context of environmental and safety regulation. We add self-reporting to the model of the control of harmful externalities through...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013223855
and high prices. Since the economic theory of cities emphasizes a search for exogenous causes of endogenous outcomes like …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013225036
We use the revised estimates of U.S. GNP constructed by Christina Romer (1989) to assess the time-series properties of U.S. output per capita over the past century. We reject at conventional significance levels the null that output is a random walk in favor of the alternative that output is a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013225150