The conventional wisdom is that taxing individuals rather than households is superior from an efficiency point of view under progressive income taxation. This is because it leads to secondary workers, whose labour supply elasticity is high, being taxed at a lower marginal rate than primary...

This paper discusses how joint cross country indirect tax initiatives can be used to achieve global rebalancing. This is potentially an important development for G20 discussions which thus far have centered on exchange rates as the instruments to achieve rebalancing. We suggest that if China and...

This paper argues that a price wedge treatment of agricultural supports can seriously misrepresent their welfare and quantity effects. We make our point by focusing on pre-1985 US wheat programs, but features of programs in many other countries lead to comparable problems with the ad valorem...

In this paper we analyze income tax design in a two member household labor supply model where time spent on consumption together by the two household members is valued differently from time spent apart. We treat consumption as a non excludable public good to members of the household; one example...

This paper explores the use of structural models as an alternative to reduced form methods when decomposing observed joint trade and technology driven wage changes into components attributable to each source. Conventional mobile factors Heckscher-Ohlin models typically reveal problems of...

Several of the recently negotiated regional trade agreements (Canada-U.S., NAFTA, E.C.-Hungary/Poland/Czeck and Slovak Republics) contain significantly fewer concessions by the large countries to smaller countries than vice versa. Yet, it is small countries that have sought them and see...

We explore the implications of trade liberalization in economies with State Owned enterprises (SOEs) and shirking. SOEs are modelled as controlled by the members of the enterprise who determine output and effort levels, while facing output prices and wage rates set by government. Enterprise...

Recent trade and wages literature focuses on whether trade or technology has been the major source of increases in wage inequality in OECD countries since the 1980s. In this literature, no attention has been paid to demand side considerations. Using a simple heterogeneous goods trade model of...