Almost all previous studies on public policy under relative consumption concerns have ignored the role of leisure for status comparisons. Inspired by Veblen (1899), this paper considers a two-type optimal income tax model, where people care about their relative consumption, and where the...

President Biden signed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package (the “American Rescue Plan”) on March 11, 2021. Without a corresponding increase in taxes, this plan has set off alarm bells for those concerned about the expansion of government deficits and debt. Mainstream economists have raised...

This Handbook entry presents a conceptual, normative overview of the subject oftaxation. It emphasizes the relationships among the main functions of taxation - notably, raisingrevenue, redistributing income, and correcting externalities - and the mapping between thesefunctions and various forms...

There is no consensus with respect to handling of tradable permits in cost–benefit analysis. The leading (organizational/governmental) manuals in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia handle permits in different ways or ignore them. This paper offers a brief discussion of the properties...

There are different views with respect to the treatment of tradeable permits for greenhouse gases in cost-benefit analysis. This note aims at illustrating numerically within a simple general equilibrium model how to treat tradeable permits in economic evaluations of projects. The note looks at a...

There are conflicting views on how to handle permits for greenhouse gases in cost-benefit analysis. This paper aims at clarifying within a simple general equilibrium model how to treat different kinds of trade-able permits in economic evaluations of projects. Within a framework that reminds of...

This thesis consists of a summary and four papers. The first two papers address political economy and industrial organization aspects of agricultural policy, and the last two international aspects of environmental policy. Paper [1] explains Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies to farmers...

In this note we discuss how to treat taxes in a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). In particular we relate the shadow price of taxes in CBA to the concepts the marginal cost of public funds MCPF) and the marginal excess burden (MEB) of taxes. In particular we demonstrate that the MCPF is equal to one...

Fifty-three percent of workers worldwide surveyed in 2008 reported they would rather work and earn less, but have a happy stress-free fulfilling life. For the 78 million baby boomers and their pre- and post-boom colleagues this desire has resulted in a phenomenon that has been labeled "encore...