This paper derives optimal commodity taxes in a two-class economy, based on Chaudhuri (1986) and Diamantaras and Thomson's (1990) λ-equitability. An allocation is λ-equitable if no agent envies a proportion λ of the bundle of any other agent. We examine the properties of Pareto undominated...

This paper studies the optimal commodity taxation problem when time taken in consumption is a perfect substitute for either labor or leisure. It shows that while labor substitutability affects the optimal tax structure, leisure substitutability leaves the classical optimal tax results intact. In...

An optimal commodity tax approach is taken to compare trade taxes and VATs when some commodities are produced informally. Trade taxes apply to all imports and exports, including intermediate goods while the VAT applies only to sales by the formal sector and imports. The VAT can achieve...

It is a standard prediction in the literature on tax competition that mobility of factors between jurisdictions causes local governments to choose too low tax rates and to underprovide public goods. This paper shows circumstances when the prediction may be false. The prediction may be false when...

An ideal planner would follow the original Samuelson rule to undertake each and every public project, program or activity up to the point where the sum of its marginal benefits is just equal to its marginal cost. Actual governments modify the rule in response to the marginal cost of public funds...

This paper examines why economies endow agents with a degree of personal privacy, even when (a) "no privacy" is ex-post (Pareto) efficient, and (b) a costless monitoring technology exists. A government can provide more of a public good only by identifying "valuable" agents from a population of...

This paper provides a conceptual framework on fair collective choice rules that synthesizes the studies of Goldman and Sussangkarn (1978) and Suzumura (1981) on the one hand and Tadenuma (2002, 2005) on the other. We show that both frameworks have the following binary relation as a common...

The Atkinson-Stiglitz Theorem states that if labor is weakly separable from goods in household utility functions, differential commodity taxation should not be not part of an optimal redistributive tax system. This Theorem, which is arguable the most policy-relevant result to come out of the...

We set out and solve a static neoclassical model with a labor/leisure choice for agents and a government sector producing a Samuelsonian public good. Numerical solutions vary considerably with the elasticity of substitution for commodities in an agent's utility function. We focus on solutions...

We present an aggregate four good model (consumption, in- vestment and two government goods) in which the current .ows of one government good are in part pure public intermediate goods. The other public goods has 'final' services for households. We are interested in a benefit approach to...