There are constraints on pricing congestible facilities. First, if heterogeneous users are observationally indistinguishable, then congestion charges must be anonymous. Second, the time variation of congestion charges may be constrained. Do these constraints undermine the feasibility of marginal...

We consider a country where a king assigns benefits in accordance with privilege determined by the population’s proximity to the throne. People have different relative advantages in seeking privilege and in productive activity. The nature of the contest for privilege determines whether, in...

Should the income tax include a credit for short taxpayers and a surcharge for tall ones? The standard Utilitarian framework for tax analysis answers this question in the affirmative. Moreover, a plausible parameterization using data on height and wages implies a substantial height tax: a tall...

This paper investigates whether government support can act to increase exporting activity. We use a uniquely rich data set on Irish manufacturing plants and employ an empirical strategy that combines a non-parametric matching procedure with a difference-in-differences estimator in order to deal...

This paper reviews the empirical literature assessing the effects of subsidies for professional sports franchises and facilities. The evidence reveals a great deal of consistency among economists doing research in this area. That evidence is that sports subsidies cannot be justified on the...

This paper analyses welfare impacts of tax reforms using a multisectoral general equilibrium tax model with multiple capital assets for the UK economy with micro-consistent benchmark data set for the year the 1995 received from the Inland Revenue. Households make consumption and labour leisure...

Welfare programs including disability benefits have been considered as an efficient way of delivering transfers to the needy. This paper addresses the importance of administrative cost of welfare systems by focusing on an agency problem arising between the government and social workers, whose...

We study the features of optimal transfers to the non-employed which include those unable to work, the voluntarily unemployed, and the involuntarily unemployed. Both voluntary and involuntary unemployment are endogenous. We analyze optimal government policies in the presence of two types of...

The multinationalization of corporate investment in recent years has given rise to a number of international tax avoidance schemes that may be eroding tax revenues in industrialized countries, but which may also reduce tax burdens on mobile capital and so facilitate investment. Both the welfare...

Estimations of the shadow economies for 120 countries, including developing, Eastern Europe and Central Asian and high income OECD countries over 1999 to 2006 are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (as a percent of "official" GDP) in 2004/05 in 76 developing countries is 35.5%, in...