We analyse the determination of taxes on harmful goods when consumers have self-control problems. We show that under reasonable assumptions, the socially optimal corrective tax exceeds the average distortion caused by self-control problems. Further, we analyse how individuals with self-control...

We analyse attempts to implement personalised regulation in the form of sin licenses (O'Donoghue and Rabin 2003, 2005, 2007) to correct the distortion in the consumption of a harmful good when consumers suffer from varying degrees of self-control problems. We take into account the possibility...

In an imperfectly competitive economy with direct and indirect taxes, the first best wage subsidy overcompensates workers and provides the incentive to misreport working hours. We show that in the second best optimum where the government cannot use a wage subsidy, the optimal policy is to tax...

We analyse the determination of taxes on harmful goods when consumers have self-control problems. We show that under reasonable assumptions, the socially optimal corrective tax exceeds the average distortion caused by self-control problems. Further, we analyse how individuals with self-control...

We build a tractable heterogeneous-agent incomplete-markets model with quasi-linear preferences to address a set of long-standing issues in the optimal Ramsey taxation literature. The tractability of our model enables us to analytically prove the existence of a Ramsey steady state and establish...

What is the prescription of Ramsey capital taxation in the long run? Aiyagari (1995) addressed the question in a heterogeneous-agent incomplete-markets (HAIM) economy, showing that a positive capital tax should be imposed to implement the so-called modified golden rule (MGR). This paper revisits...

In this paper we calibrate the social cost of optimal taxes in a class of imperfectly competitive economies and examine the correspondence of this social cost with the number of tax instruments and the number and the sources of distortions. We calibrate the Ramsey equilibrium for three standard...

This paper addresses a long-standing problem in the optimal Ramsey capital taxation literature. The tractability of our model enables us to solve the Ramsey problem analytically along the entire transitional path. We show that the conventional wisdom on Ramsey tax policy and its underlying...

Based on detailed administrative tax records, we implement a bunching design to explorehow individual taxpayers respond to personal income taxation in Uruguay. We estimatea very modest elasticity of taxable income at the first kink point (0.06) driven bya combination of gross labour income and...

This article examines the properties of the optimal fiscal policy in an economy with warm-glow altruism (utility interdependence) and heterogeneous individuals. We propose a new efficiency concept, D-efficiency, that considers an implicit constraint in the act of giving: donors cannot bequeath...