We examine the effect of addictive behavior on a socially optimal environmental tax. If utility in part depends on past consumption and individuals are time-consistent, the socially optimal environmental tax is shown to be equal to the conventional Pigovian tax. In a second-best world where the...

We investigate the importance of relative income within the Indian Caste system, using a choice experiment. We find that slightly more than half of the marginal utility of income comes from some kind of relative income effects, on average, which is comparable to the results from previous studies...

We find, using survey-experimental methods, that most individuals are concerned with both relative income and relative consumption of particular goods. The degree of concern varies in the expected direction depending on the properties of the good. However, contrary to what has been suggested in...

This article summarizes the contribution in fisheries economics by the Danish economist Jens Warming and gives a translation of his article “Aalegaardsretten” (The Danish Right to Eel Weir, 1931). Warming, provides an early reference on the problem of open access, precedes Arthur Pigou in...

The effect of session size has largely been ignored in experimental studies, despite the possibility that it may play a role by changing people’s perception of the potential chance of encountering a certain type of people and by affecting the strength of the potential link between people. This...

Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die Frage nach der Wahl eines optimalen Wechselkursregimes für ausgewählte Transformationsländer (Tschechische Republik, Ungarn, Estland, Slowenien und Polen), die an einer baldigen Aufnahme in die EWWU interessiert sind. Der gewählte Analyseansatz greift...

This paper contributes to recent literature emphasizing the importance to identify the different channels along which taxable income responses occur. Using bunching techniques and exploiting a large first kink point where marginal tax rates increase by as much as 38 percentage points, we recover...

This paper analyzes optimal differential commodity taxation, together with optimal nonlinear income taxation, in order to deal with positional preferences. It also derives the optimal public provision of private goods both when differential commodity taxation is feasible and when it is not. It...

The optimal provision of a state-variable public good, where the global climate is the prime example, is analyzed in a model where people care about their relative consumption. We consider both keeping-up-with-the-Joneses preferences (where people compare their own current consumption with...

Previous studies on public policy under relative consumption concerns have ignored the role of leisure comparisons. This paper considers a two-type optimal nonlinear income tax model where people care both about their relative consumption and their relative leisure. Increased consumption...