This chapter reviews the theory of the voluntary public and private redistribution of wealth elaborated by economic analysis in the last forty years or so. The central object of the theory is altruistic gift-giving, construed as benevolent voluntary redistribution of income or wealth. The theory...

We analyze a general equilibrium model of a completely decentralized pure public good economy. Competitive firms using private goods as inputs produce the public good, which is privately provided by households. Previous studies on private provision of public goods typically use one private good,...

This paper develops a model of centralized public spending where decision-makers are the regional median voters instead of the national median voter of the received literature. Regional representatives decide the level of public spending by bargaining in the central legislature. We study how...

This paper reconsiders the debate around the political determination of capital income taxes and explains why such taxes survive in most OECD countries. The political economy literature on redistributive politics (Persson and Tabellini 2003) emphasizes the role played by the lower class in the...

We develop a general equilibrium OLG model to evaluate a wide menu of popular redistributive policies in a unified context. We work in two steps: First, we study how initial conditions in human and financial capital, as inherited from family background, shape individuals' human capital, and...

Cet article étudie le rôle redistributif d'une assurance sociale exclusive en présence d'un mécanisme d'imposition directe optimale. Les agents sont caractérisés par une productivité individuelle et un risque maladie. La réalisation de ce risque engendre une dépense de santé ainsi...

Belgium has seen major changes in its tax-benefit system over the past twenty years. These changes have, to a large extent, co-determined the evolution of disposable incomes of Belgian households on one hand, and their incentives to work on the other. In this paper we assess equity and...

This paper deals with the consequences of the assumption of negatively interdependent preferences for the shape of the optimal nonlinear income tax and the effcient level of public good provision in a setting where the policy maker maximizes an inequality averse social welfare function and the...

Belgium has seen major changes in its tax-benefit system over the past twenty years. These changes have, to a large extent, co-determined the evolution of disposable incomes of Belgian households on one hand, and their incentives to work on the other. In this paper we assess equity and...

This paper deals with the consequences of the assumption of negatively interdependent preferences for the shape of the optimal nonlinera income tax and the efficient level of public good provision in a setting where the policy maker maximizes an inequality averse social welfare function and the...