The article presents a historical review of the literature related to the empirical problem of excessive risk premium. The risk premium (the difference between the return on equities and risk-free rate) observed in financial markets cannot be reconciled with theoretical models of financial...

We study the incidence and the optimal design of nonlinear income taxes in a Mirrleesian economy with a continuum of endogenous wages. We characterize analytically the incidence of any tax reform by showing that one can mathematically formalize this problem as an integral equation. For a CES...

The purpose of the presentation is to analyze the labor market effects of a congestion charge when commuters have continuously distributed value of time. Since a congestion charge raises the cost of commuting to work, it can decrease employment at the extensive margin in a similar way as an...

We analyze the role of optimal income taxation across different local labor markets. Should labor in large cities be taxed differently than in small cities? We find that a planner who needs to raise revenue and is constrained by free mobility of labor across cities does not choose equal taxes...

We develop a unifying framework for optimal income taxation in multi-activity economies with general production technologies. Agents are characterized by an N-dimensional skill vector that captures intrinsic abilities in N activities. The private return to each activity depends on individual...