This paper develops an expanded framework for social planning in which the existence of coercion is explicitly acknowledged. Key issues concern the precise definition of coercion for individuals and in the aggregate, its difference from redistribution, and its incorporation into normative...

A new view is emerging in the economic literature on how to analyze and interpret national and subnational revenue systems. Recent work has shown that such systems can be modelled successfully as sets of related policy instruments that are being shaped and used deliberately by vote-maximizing...

Most modern economies tax both consumption and labour income. While there is an extensive normative literature on the optimal mix of the two taxes, there is little examination of what determines the actual mix in a well specified political economy context. We use a multi-dimensional spatial...

We investigate the influence of public policy on interprovincial migration in Canada using new aggregated migration data for 1974-1996, the longest period studied so far. We consider the consequences of regional variation in a variety of policies, and also investigate the effects of certain...