We develop a unifying framework for optimal income taxation in multi-sector economies with general patterns of externalities. Agents in this model are characterized by an N-dimensional skill vector corresponding to intrinsic abilities in N potentially externality-causing activities. The private...

The effects of income and consumption taxation are examined in the context of models in which the growth process is driven by the accumulation of human and physical capital. The different channels through which these taxes affect economic growth are discussed, and it is shown that in general the...

This paper revisits the Atkinson-Stiglitz result on uselessness of commodity taxation in the presence of optimal non-linear income taxation in a more general setup, namely when tastes are heterogeneous. This general analysis displays the key economic assumptions under which the Atkinson-Stiglitz...

This paper examines the welfare consequences of changing the current U.S. income tax system to a progressive consumption tax. We compute a sequence of single period equilibria in which savings decisions depend on the expected future return to capital. In the presence of existing income taxes,...

In this paper we compute the optimal tax and education policy transition in an economy where progressive taxes provide social insurance against idiosyncratic wage risk, but distort the education decision of households. Optimally chosen tertiary education subsidies mitigate these distortions. We...

This paper computes the optimal progressivity of the income tax code in a dynamic general equilibrium model with household heterogeneity in which uninsurable labor productivity risk gives rise to a nontrivial income and wealth distribution. A progressive tax system serves as a partial substitute...

We study models incorporating money, household production, and investment in housing. Inflation, as a tax on market activity, encourages substitution into household production, and thus investment in household capital. Hence, inflation increases the (appropriately deflated) value of the housing...

This paper uses a simple model of labor supply extended to allow for home production to understand the extent to which differences in taxes can account for differences in time allocations between the US and Europe. Once home production is included, the elasticity of substitution between...

This paper introduces a labor force participation choice into a labor market matching model embedded in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium set-up with production and savings. The participation choice is modelled as a tradeoff between forgoing the expected benefits of being search active...

Information frictions imply it is reasonable to expect the same commodity, in a given location, to sell for different prices at the same time. Aguiar and Hurst (AH) [2007] demonstrate how the search behavior implied by these price differences can be used estimate the opportunity cost of time....