We take issue with the argument expounded, among others, by Layard (2006, Economic Journal) that status-seeking preferences justify heavier taxation of income because this serves to internalise the negative externality that the pursuit of status imposes on others. In a model where status depends...

In this paper we develop a discrete model of optimal taxation of married couples and empirically discuss the optimality of income taxation for this group. To this end, we derive the social welfare function which guarantees that joint taxation of married couples is optimal. We will contrast this...

This paper characterizes the optimal redistributive taxation when individuals are heterogeneous in two exogenous dimensions: their skills and their values of non-market activities. Search-matching frictions on the labor markets create unemployment. Wages, labor demand and participation are...