The precautionary principle requires that we take additional actions to prevent harm when the harm from an activity is uncertain and possibly irreversible. This paper considers whether environmental or other Pigouvian taxes should be precautionary. Should environmental taxes be set higher than...

Criticizes the need to treat short sales against the box as realization events. Argues that the net welfare gain of such treatment is uncertain (under traditional Haig-Simons notions of equity) and that efficiency gains are dependent on views of stock trading.

This paper extends the literature on the effect of an income tax on risk taking to the case where different tax rates apply to different types of assets. It shows that an income tax that nominally imposes different rates on the full return to investments can be recharacterized as a uniform tax...