We study Pareto optimal tax and education policies when human capital upon labor market entry is endogenous and individuals face wage uncertainty. Though optimal labor distortions are history-dependent, i.e. depend on income and education, simple policy instruments can yield the desired...

This paper deals with the consequences of the assumption of negatively interdependent preferences for the shape of the optimal nonlinear income tax and the effcient level of public good provision in a setting where the policy maker maximizes an inequality averse social welfare function and the...

Non-linear income taxes and linear commodity taxes are analysed when people differ with respect to ability, high-skilled agents have heterogeneous preferences, and neither individual abilities nor preferences are observable. The paper highlights how informational constraints may motivate...

This paper concerns redistribution and provision of public goods in an economic federation with two levels of government: a local government in each locality and a central government for the economic federation as a whole. We assume that each locality is characterized by two ability-types (high...

Paternalism, merit goods and specific egalitarianism are concepts we sometimes meet in the literature. The thing in common is that the policy maker does not fully respect the consumer sovereignty principle and design policies according to some other criterion than individuals' preferences. Using...

The focus of the present paper is on the intragenerational effects of nonlinear income taxation in a multiperiod framework. We investigate whether it is possible to achieve redistribution at smaller efficiency costs by enlarging the message space adopted in standard tax system (which only...

This paper addresses transboundary environmental problems in the context of an optimal tax problem, when part of the labor force is mobile across countries. The policy instruments include both commodity taxation and nonlinear income taxation. We show how the tax policy in a noncooperative...

We examine how tax avoidance in the form of trade in well-functioning asset markets affects the basic labor supply model. We show that tax arbitrage has dramatic implications for positive, normative and econometric analysis of how taxes affect work incentives.

This paper is concerned with the problem of combining a non-linear income tax with an indirect externality correcting tax. The analysis is performed in a model economy with two types of individuals and two types of consumption goods. The government wants to redistribute from the more able...

For more than 25 years, the Social Security Trust Fund has been projected to run out of money in 2033 (give or take a few years), potentially causing benefits to be severely reduced in the absence of corrective legislative action. Today (February 2024), projections are made by the Social...