Assuming a two-period model with endogenous choices of labour, education, and saving, it is shown to be second-best efficient not to distort the choice of education...

Are reforms towards individual taxation politically feasible? Are they desirable from a welfare perspective? We develop a method to answer such questions and apply it to the US federal income tax since the 1960s. Main findings are: As of today, Pareto-improvements require a move away from joint...

A uniform price for carbon is at the center of market-based approaches to climate policy. Actual climate policy, by contrast, has many sector-specific rules. This paper studies the desirability of the market-based approach using tools from the theory of taxation. It is found that a justification...

Should climate policy rely on a price of Carbon that is uniform across sectors? This paper studies this question from a public finance perspective. It is found that a justification for a uniform price can be given, but it relies on strong assumptions, among them indifference with respect to the...

In this paper it is shown that allowing the deduction of work-related expenses has a strictly positive effect on tax efficiency only if two conditions hold jointly: (i) The expenses should be interpretable as real cost and (ii) the expenses should be required for increasing taxable income....

In Europe, the competence for social security and the right to levy income tax lie with the country of employment in cross-border matters. This has two disadvantages. First, the Employment Principle distorts active persons' choice of place of work. Second, the employment-based regulation of...

Assuming a two-period model with endogenous choices of labour, education, and saving, it is shown to be second-best efficient not to distort the choice of education. In general this implies distorting the saving decision. Hence a strict order of policy priority is derived. Efficient tax policy...

The European Union fulfills its emissions reductions commitments by means of an emissions trading scheme covering some part of each member state's economy and by national emissions control in the rest of their economies. The member states also levy energy/emissions taxes overlapping with the...

Assuming a two-period model with endogenous choices of labour, education, and saving, it is shown to be second-best efficient to deviate from Ramsey's Rule and to distort qualified labour less than nonqualified labour. The result holds for arbitrary utility and learning functions. Efficient...

Assuming isoelastic returns to education and an endogenous supply of qualified and nonqualified labour, it is shown to be second-best efficient not to distort the choice of education. Furthermore, taxation should set incentives so that qualified labour is substituted for nonqualified labour. As...