Die optimale Besteuerung beeinträchtigt nicht die allokative Effizienz der Marktwirtschaft. Sie korrigiert ungerechte Einkommensvertei- lungen. Nur Pauschalsteuern wären «erstbeste» optimale Steuern. Sie sind aber als Alleinsteuern unrealistisch. Die Finanzwissenschaft sucht daher - bislang...

Chapter from: 'Rising Inequality in China: Challenge to a Harmonious Society', edited by Shi Li, Hiroshi Sato and Terry Sicular.

This paper studies the effects of differential tax treatment toward married and single individuals in the US on marriage formation and composition, divorce and labor supply. We develop a marriage market model with search frictions and heterogeneous agents that is sufficiently rich to capture key...

We use a new panel dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how consumers responded to the 2001 federal income tax rebates. We estimate the monthly response of credit card payments, spending, and debt, exploiting the unique, randomized timing of the rebate disbursement. We find that on average...