We investigate the theoretical relationship between wage concentration and international market integration. Access to imported varieties lowers the cost of intermediate inputs (“machines”) used to carry out production tasks, causing workers with different comparative abilities to be sorted...

We examine why heterogenous communities may fail to provide public goods. Current work characterizes sanctioning free-riders as an under-supplied public good. We argue that often free-riders can be punished by the coordinated action of a group. This punishment can be profitable, and need not be...

We consider a setting in which capital taxation is characterized by two distortions working in opposite directions. On one hand, governments engage in tax competition and are tempted to lower capital tax rates. On the other hand, they are unable to commit to future policies and, once capital has...

We analyze a two-sector, general-equilibrium model of productive matching and sorting, where risky production is carried out by pairs of individuals both exerting effort. Risk-neutral (entrepreneurial) individuals can match either with other risk-neutral individuals, or – acting as employers/...

Taxation is only sustainable if the general public complies with it. This observation is uncontroversial with tax practitioners but has been ignored by the public finance tradition, which has interpreted tax constitutions as binding contracts by which the power to tax is irretrievably conferred...

We examine gender differences in intergenerational patterns of social mobility for second-generation migrants. Empirical studies of social mobility have found that women are generally more mobile than men. Matching theory suggests that this may be because the importance of market characteristics...

Empirical studies of intergenerational social mobility have found that women are more mobile than men. To explain this finding, we describe a model of multitrait matching and inheritance, in which individuals’ attractiveness in the marriage market depends on their market and non-market...

We describe a model of dynamic pollution abatement choices with heterogeneous agents, where, due to the presence of a distributional objective and to the absence of incentive-compatible compensation mechanisms, the choice of a second-best level of emission taxation is time-inconsistent. In this...

Bargaining theory predicts that married women who experience a relative improvement in their labor market position should experience a comparative gain within their marriage. However, if renegotiation possibilities are limited by institutional mechanisms that achieve long-term commitment, the...

This paper examines the implications of environmental externalities for income tax design in a growing economy. We describe a model with endogenously generated knowledge, in which technical progress reduces the emissions generated by production activities. In this setting, the lack of...