Ramsey-Boiteux prices and monopoly prices are frequently regarded as being similar. This might suggest that, in particular in network in- dustries with large fixed costs, sometimes monopoly pricing is close to the Ramsey-Boiteux second best and welfare superior to imperfectly regulated prices....

This paper takes up the debate whether price-cap regulation of airports should take the form of single-till or dual-till regulation. The contribution is to model single- and dual-till regulation, evaluate their welfare implications, and compare them to Ramsey prices. We show that the single-till...

This paper studies the relation between Bayesian mechanism de- sign and the Ramsey-Boiteux approach to the provision and pricing of excludable public goods. For a large economy with private informa- tion about individual preferences, the two approaches are shown to be equivalent if and only if,...

The paper develops an integrated model of optimal nonlinear income taxation, public-goods provision and pricing in a large economy. With asymmetric information about labour productivities and publicgoods preferences, the multidimensional mechanism design problem becomes tractable by requiring...

A digressive tax such as a variable rate sales tax or a tax on price gives firms an incentive for expanding output. Thus, unlike unit and ad valorem taxes which amplify the harm from monopoly, a digressive tax lessens the harm. We analyse a tax on price with respect to efficiency and practical...

This paper studies the aggregate and distributional implications of introducing user fees for publicly provided excludable public goods into a model with consumption and income taxes. The setup is a neoclassical growth model where agents differ in earnings and second-best policy is chosen by a...

The Ramsey rule for the consumption rate of discount assumes a transfer of money of a (representative) agent at one point in time to the same agent at another point in time. Climate policy (implicitly) transfers money not just over time but also between agents. I propose three alternative...

In an imperfectly competitive economy with direct and indirect taxes, the first best wage subsidy overcompensates workers and provides the incentive to misreport working hours. We show that in the second best optimum where the government cannot use a wage subsidy, the optimal policy is to tax...

We examine the optimal taxation problem in a two sector neoclassical economy with workers and capitalists. We show that in a steady state of this economy the optimal policy may involve a capital income tax or subsidy, differential taxation of labour income and redistribution. The level and the...

We develop a simple Ramsey model with numerous Cournotian industries where entry generates an endogenous markup. The model produces two different regimes: a monopoly and an oligopoly one. We provide a rigorous study of non-smooth dynamics and we also analyse the global dynamics of the model,...