The paper tries to provide an overview of the fiscal pressures on Eastern European governments during the transition from centrally planned to market economies, and what responses might be called for. In each case it is started by describing the conventional wisdom concerning how best to deal...

To what degree do economists disagree about key economic questions? To provide evidence, we make use of the responses to a series of questions posed to a distinguished panel of economists put together by the Chicago School of Business. Based on our analysis, we find a broad consensus on these...

This paper analyzes optimal linear taxes on capital and labor incomes in a life-cyclemodel of human capital investment, financial savings, and labor supply with heteroge-nous individuals. A dual income tax with a positive marginal tax rate on not onlylabor income but also capital income is...

We develop models of optimal linear and non-linear income taxation with endogenous human capital formation to explore optimal education subsidies. Optimal subsidies on education ensure efficiency in human capital accumulation and thus play an important role in alleviating the tax distortions on...

The most cost-effective policies for achieving CO2 abatement (e.g., carbon taxes) fail to get off the ground politically because of unacceptable distributional consequences. This paper explores CO2 abatement policies designed to address distributional concerns. Using an intertemporal numerical...

In einer modernen wissensintensiven Wirtschaft ist Humankapital der Schlüssel zur Sicherung des Arbeitskräfteangebots und des Produktivitätszuwachses. Humankapital wird nicht nur in Schulen, sondern auch in der Familie und in Betrieben gebildet. Daher ist ein Gleichgewicht von Arbeit und...

This paper employs an overlapping-generations model to explore the impact of public abatement on private investment and the intergenerational distribution of welfare. Whereas public abatement benefits the oldest generations in terms of non-environmental welfare, future generations gain most in...