We study the strategic incentives of regional governments to allocate their budget to public investment and to public consumption expenditures against the background of an incentive-compatible redistribution policy set by the central government. Regional investment changes the productivity...

We characterize optimal income taxation and unemployment insurance in a search-matching framework where both voluntary and involuntary unemployment are endogenous and Nash bargaining determines wages. Individuals differ in utility when voluntarily unemployed (non-participants in the labour...

We integrate social exclusion, operationalized in terms of long-term unemployment, into the theory of optimal redistributive taxation. Our results show how an optimal mix of education policy, public employment, and support to the unemployed, in conjunction with optimal income taxation,...

A common assumption in the optimal taxation literature is that the social planner maximizes a welfarist social welfare function with weights decreasing with income. However, high transfer withdrawal rates in many countries imply very low weights for the working poor in practice. We reconcile...

Can taxes on consumption redistribute in developing countries? Contrary to consensus, we show that taxing consumption is progressive once we account for informal consumption. Using household expenditure surveys in 32 countries we proxy for informal consumption using the type of store where...

We use a quantitative heterogeneous agent model with nominal rigidities and unemployment risk to analyze the effectiveness of several fiscal policies in stabilizing a demand-driven recession. The model delivers empirically realistic distributions of marginal propensities to consume (mpc) 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...

How is the optimal level of Pigouvian taxation influenced by distributive concerns? With second-best instruments, a higher level of income redistribution calls for a lower level of Pigouvian taxation. More redistribution implies higher distortions from income taxation. Pigouvian tax revenues...

This paper develops a simulation model in order to examine the effectiveness of state attempts at redistribution under a variety of migration elasticity assumptions. Key outputs from the simulation include the impact of tax-induced migration on state revenues, excess burden, and fiscal...