We develop a model of political competition with endogenous turnout and endogenous platforms. Parties trade off incentivizing their supporters to vote and discouraging the supporters of the competing party from voting. We show that the latter objective is particularly pronounced for a party with...

This paper studies the tax treatment of couples. We develop two different ap-proaches. One is tailored to the analysis of tax systems that stick to the principle that the tax base for couples is the sum of their incomes. One is tailored to the analysis of reforms toward individual taxation. We...

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...

We study a large economy model in which individuals have private information about their productive abilities and their preferences. Moreover, there is aggregate uncertainty so that the social benefits from taxation and public goods provision are a priori unknown. The analysis is based on a...

We study the classical free-rider problem in public goods provision in a large economy with uncertainty about the average valuation of the public good. Individual preferences over public goods are shaped by a skill and a taste parameter. We use a mechanism design approach to solve for the...

The literature on public goods has shown that efficient outcomes are impossible if participation constraints have to be respected. This paper addresses the question whether they should be imposed. It asks under what conditions efficiency considerations justify that individuals are forced to pay...

We study whether a firm that produces and sells access to an excludable public good should face a self-financing requirement, or, alternatively, receive subsidies that help to cover the cost of public-goods provision. The main result is that the desirability of a self-financing requirement is...

We propose a new approach to the normative analysis of public-good provision in a large economy. Our analysis is based on a mechanism design approach that involves a requirement of coalition-proofness, as well as a requirement of robustness, so that the mechanism must not depend on specific...

The literature on public goods has shown that efficient outcomes are impossible if participation constraints have to be respected. This paper addresses the question whether they should be imposed. It asks under what conditions efficiency considerations justify that individuals are forced to pay...

We study the interdependence of optimal tax and expenditure policies. An optimal policy requires that information on preferences is made available. We first study this problem from a general mechanism design perspective and show that efficiency is possible only if the individuals who decide on...