We present a simple model of capital accumulation where agents care about their consumption relative to the consumption of other members of society. This concern with "envy" captures the intuition behind the growing body of empirical evidence that places interpersonal comparisons as a key...

In this paper we study the taxation of car ownership, car use and public transport in the presence of externalities within the framework of a discrete/continuous choice model. We first derive optimal taxes in a simplified setting, emphasizing the specific role of fixed car ownership taxes and...

This paper proposes a general framework for analysing commodity tax competition under destination and origin principles, based on three possible tax spillovers: the consumer price spillover, the producer price/terms of trade spillover, and rent spillovers. A model is presented which can be...

This Paper explores the optimal role of the tax system in alleviating labour-market imperfections and raising revenue. For this purpose, the standard search model of the labour market is extended by introducing scarce entrepreneurial talent and arbitrage between the supply and demand. We study...

Most studies on the green tax reform issue point out that environmental taxes exacerbate pre-existing tax distortions, thereby increasing the welfare costs associated with the overall tax code. As a result, the optimal environmental tax should lie below the Pigovian level (or marginal social...

Equalisation grants can affect a state's fiscal behaviour because its tax policies can affect the size of its grant. For a large state, an increase in its tax rate will increase the standard tax rate used to calculate the grant for that base and thereby reduce (increase) the state's grant if it...

This paper investigates the relationship between the disparity in tax base and tax collection. I address the tax collection problem with traditional industrial organization approach. Thus, I model the "tax minimization" industry where the supplier helps taxpayers to avoid their tax liability. I...

This article applies a traditional industrial organization framework to the issue of tax compliance. First, we model the "tax advice" industry where the supplier helps taxpayers reduce their tax liability. Then we exploit the fact that more convex demand function results in lower equilibrium...

The possibility of using revenues from environmental taxes to reduce other distortions in the tax system has been much discussed recently. This paper reviews the current debate and presents empirical evidence to suggest that the double dividend approach to CO2 emissions control in Canada can...

We study the optimal redistributive tax structure when the population can be disaggregated into tagged groups. We begin with the case in which the tag has no normative significance, but simply separates the population into identifiable groups with different distributions of ability-types. Under...