We develop a political economy model of income taxation and public spending, in which we pay special attention to the composition of the latter. The significant economic unit is taken to be the household. Each household is made of two agents, positively sorted by wage, who engage in the...

This paper considers how optimal education and tax policy depends on the risk properties of human capital. It is demonstrated that a key feature of human capital investments is whether they increase or decrease wage risk. In a benchmark model it is shown that this feature alone determines...