We study how an optimal income tax and an optimal public-goods provision rule respond to preference and productivity shocks. A conventional Mirrleesian treatment is shown to provoke manipulations of the policy mechanism by individuals with similar interests. We therefore extend the Mirrleesian...

Social marginal welfare weights play an important role in areas of applied public policy analysis such as tax reform. These weights reflect the values of the social planner, or equivalently the underlying social welfare function. A number of recent papers have questioned the "default"...

This paper extends the model of optimal income taxation due to Mirrlees (1971) and includes private information on public goods preferences. A mechanism design approach is used to establish the following result: If policies are required to be robustly implementable in the sense of Bergemann and...

We study a large economy model in which individuals have private information about their productive abilities and their preferences for public goods. A mechanism design approach is used to characterize implementable tax and expenditure policies. A robustness requirement in the sense of Bergemann...

We study how an optimal income tax and an optimal public-goods provision rule respond to preference and productivity shocks. A conventional Mirrleesian treatment is shown to provoke manipulations of the policy mechanism by individuals with similar interests. We therefore extend the Mirrleesian...

We study a large economy model in which individuals have private information about their productive abilities and their preferences. Moreover, there is aggregate uncertainty so that the social benefits from taxation and public goods provision are a priori unknown. The analysis is based on a...

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...

Social marginal welfare weights play an important role in areas of applied public policy analysis such as tax reform. These weights reflect the values of the social planner, or equivalently the underlying social welfare function. A number of recent papers have questioned the "default"...

The present work deals with the fiscal decentralization reforms in developing countries. Empirical evidence demonstrates that deficiencies in the decentralization process, particularly on revenue composition issues, are many even today and of difficult solution for developing countries. Our...