How are substitution in the spatial and in the temporal sense connected? Can estimates based on data with spatial variation be transmitted into values appropriate for exploring temporal variation, and vice versa? This paper, building on, inter alia, Frisch (1959), attempts to give some...

Since identification, instrumental variables and variables exclusion, core concepts in econometrics, are entwined, several questions arise: How is identification related to the existence of IVs? How are identification criteria related to omitted variables? Is omission/inclusion of variables from...

The often discussed problems of aggregating tangible capital assets across vintages and of decomposing value aggregates into quantity and price aggregates are revisited. For stock values and service flow values, some new results are given, and illustrated by examples, along with...

We consider environmental regulation in a context where firms invest in abatement technology under conditions of uncertainty about subsequent abatement cost, but can subsequently adjust output in the light of true marginal abatement cost. Where an emission tax is the only available instrument,...

The incidence and efficiency losses of taxes have usually been analysed in isolation from public expenditures. This negligence of the expenditure side may imply a serious misperception of the effects of marginal tax rates. The reason is that part of the marginal tax may in fact be payment for...

Non-linear income taxes and linear commodity taxes are analysed when people differ with respect to ability, high-skilled agents have heterogeneous preferences, and neither individual abilities nor preferences are observable. The paper highlights how informational constraints may motivate...

When a public good is excludable it is possible to charge individuals for using the good. We study the role of prices on excludable public goods within an extension of the Stern-Stiglitz version of the Mirrlees optimal income tax model. Our discussion includes both the case where the public good...

This paper studies a very pure form of "vote purchasing". We consider whether it may be in the interest of a party to discriminate between groups that, possibly except for size, are identical in all welfare relevant spects, i.e. the groups are assumed to have the same income, needs, etc. To...