The thesis of this paper is that more transparent, rule-bound and subtle mechanisms for policy coordination will be needed to ensure the success of an enlarged European Union. A common policy is a public good with distributional implications. Economists have developed a large number of plausible...

In this paper, we suggest a method which enables the user to identify commodities that all individuals who can agree on certain weak assumptions with regard to the social welfare function will agree upon as worth subsidizing or taxing in the absence of efficiency considerations. The method is...

This paper encompasses multiple sources of inefficiency introduced by the U.S. tax system into a single general equilibrium model. Using disaggregate calculations of user cost, we measure interasset distortions from the differential taxation of many types of assets. Simultaneously, we model the...

This paper develops an asset price approach to the analysis of capital taxation. The costs of adjusting capital stocks cause tax changes to have important impacts on the valuation of existing capital. The recapitalizations associated with tax reforms represent an important aspect of their...

This chapter provides an overview of key economic issues in the use of taxation as an instrument of environmental policy in the UK. It first reviews economic arguments for using taxes and other market mechanisms in environmental policy, discusses the choice of tax base, and considers the value...

Frank Ramsey's classic paper "A contribution to the theory of taxation" gave rise to the modern theory of optimal taxation. This paper traces the literature that grew out of Ramsey's 1927 paper and assesses which of its key insights has proven robust. Though the path breaking work of Peter...

In the overlapping generations model with uncertain lifetimes, efficient life insurance markets and no operative intergenerational gift and bequest motive, a positive birth rate has been shown to be sufficient and necessary for absence of debt neutrality: equilibrium prices and quantities are...

This paper derives analytical measures of the combined effects of tax changes and adjustment costs on investment and market value. Unlike earlier measures, the effective tax rate derived is valid in the presence of adjustment costs and anticipated tax changes. The derived measure of the impact...

This paper examines the incidence of commodity taxes, finding that, when demand and marginal cost schedules are linear. the burden of commodity taxation is distributed between buyers and sellers so that each suffers the same percentage reduction on pre-tax surplus. This equiproportionate...

This paper explores the implications of tax rate uncertainty, identifying circumstances in which revenue-neutral tax rate variability increases profitability, economic activity, and the efficiency of resource allocation. Furthermore, with heterogeneous taxpayers, tax rate variability is shown to...