This paper explores the optimal risk sharing arrangement between generations in an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth. We allow for nonseparable preferences, paying particular attention to the risk aversion of the old as well as overall “life-cycle” risk aversion. We provide...

The rational prodigality argument, which often serves to justify social security,is considered in a second-best tax framework with endogenous labor supply. Rationalprodigality renders the familiar policies time inconsistent. We analyze time consistentpolicies and show that a wage tax suffices to...

In their book The Power to Tax, Brennan and Buchanan have pointed to a central weakness of the traditional theory of public finance and especially of the theory of optimal taxation: This approach overlooked the problem of governmental power and the tendency of this power to be abused. It was...

By inverting Saez (2002)’s model of optimal income taxation, we characterize theredistributive preferences of the Irish government between 1987 and 2005. The (marginal)social welfare function revealed by this approach is consistently comparable over time andshow great stability despite...

This paper characterizes optimal income taxation when individuals respond along both theintensive and extensive margins. Individuals are heterogeneous across two dimensions:specifically, their skill and disutility of participation. Preferences over consumption and workeffort can differ with...

This paper concerns optimal redistributive income taxation and provision of a public inputgood in a two-type model with a minimum wage policy implemented for the low-ability type,where firms may outsource part of the production process abroad, and where outsourcing issubstitutable for domestic...

Given its significance in practice, piecewise linear taxation has received relatively littleattention in the literature. This paper offers a simple and transparent analysis of its maincharacteristics. We fully characterize optimal tax parameters for the cases in which budgetsets are convex and...

Does joint taxation disadvantage women? To answer that question, this paper begins byreviewing unitary and bargaining models of intrafamily allocation, and then discusses thedeterminants of "bargaining power" in a world without taxes...

When a deficit occurs in the funding of collective goods, it is usually covered by raising theamount of taxes or by rationing the supply of the goods. This article compares the efficiencyof these institutions. We report the results of a 2x2 experiment based on a game in the firststage of which...

This paper makes a fresh attempt at characterizing optimal commoditytaxes. Under the usual assumptions, an extremely simple expressionof second-best commodity taxes is derived, showing tax rates as functions ofobservable variables only, rather than as functions of unobservable variablessuch as...