Belgium has seen major changes in its tax-benefit system over the past twenty years. These changes have, to a large extent, co-determined the evolution of disposable incomes of Belgian households on one hand, and their incentives to work on the other. In this paper we assess equity and...

The article analyzes the spatial pattern of public spending in several federative and regional scales. Theoretical considerations show gaps and common concepts to the relationship between federalism and territory. The empirical analysis shows an asymmetric pattern, with small and large...

We consider a model in which business public services must be financed with either a source-based tax on mobile capital, such as a property tax, or a tax on production, such as an origin-based VAT and assess which of the two tax instruments is more efficient. In general, both a capital tax and a...

In ricardianischer Sichtweise ließe sich die Europäische Union in Länder der Peripherie und Kernländer aufteilen, wobei die Peripherie durch geringere Faktorentgelte charakterisiert ist. Die Bodenrente als Residuum der übrigen Faktorentgelte ist im Kern höher als am Rand und im Laufe der...

We provide a comprehensive survey of the recent literature on the link between productive government expenditure and economic growth. Starting with the seminal paper of Robert Barro (1990) we show that an understanding of the core results of the ensuing contributions can be gained from the study...

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...

We characterize the Pareto-frontier in a simple Mirrleesian model of income taxation. We show how the second-best frontier which incorporates incentive constraints due to private information on productive abilities relates to the first-best frontier which takes only resource constraints into...

This paper combines the problem of optimal income taxation with the free-rider problem in public good provision. There are two groups of individuals with private information on their earning ability and their valuation of a public good. Adjustments of the transfer system are needed to discourage...

This paper examines the implications of habit formation in private and public consumption for the Pareto-efficient provision of public goods, based on a two-period model with nonlinear taxation. If the public good supply is time-invariant, the presence of habit formation generally alters the...

The marginal cost of public funds (MCF) is substantial in generous welfare state countries according to Kleven and Kreiner (2006). Their main estimate for the Danish economy exceeds 2 mainly because taxation distorts labor force participation. Adjustments in social transfers which alleviate such...