Using a collective model of consumption, we characterize optimal commodity taxes aimed at targeting speci…c individuals within the household. The main message is that distortionary indirect taxation can circumvent the agency problem of the household. Essentially, taxation should discourage...

This paper asks whether the gap in subjective happiness between spouses matters per se, i.e. whether it predicts divorce. We use three panel databases to explore this question. Controlling for the level of life satisfaction of spouses, we find that a higher satisfaction gap, even in the first...

The birth of children often shifts the power balance within a family. If family decisions are made according to the spouses' welfare function, this shift in power may lead to a time consistency problem. The allocation of resources after the birth of children may differ from the ex-ante optimal...

This paper intends to make a two-fold contribution to the literature. First, it studies a political economy model of family taxation using a household economics approach to behaviour; the nature of the winning policy is found to depend on whether i) the parents control their fertility or not,...

This paper presents for the .rst time the properties of optimal piece-wise linear tax systems for two-earner households, based on joint and individual incomes respectively. A key contribution is the analysis of the interaction of second earner wage di¤erences, variation in prices of bought-in...

The Mirrlees Review of the UK tax system, together with its companion volume of research papers, can be expected to influence future discussions of tax reform. Indeed, this can already be recognised in the Henry Review. As far as income taxation is concerned, the most substantive recommendation...

The authors study labor supply of elderly couples by means of a collective model. The model allows individuals to enjoy leisure more (or less) in company of their spouse (complementarity/ externalities in leisure). Preferences and the intra-household bargaining process are identified by using...

We examine the effects of di¤erences in social capital on first and second best transfers to families with children, in an asym- metric information context where the number of births, and the future earning capacity of each child that is born, are random variables. The probability that a couple...

Using a collective model of consumption, we characterize optimal commodity taxes aimed at targeting specific individuals within the household. The main message is that distortionary indirect taxation can circumvent the agency problem of the household. Essentially, taxation should discourage less...

This paper intends to make a two-fold contribution to the literature. First, it studies a political economy model of family taxation using a household economics approach to behaviour; the nature of the winning policy is found to depend on whether i) the parents control their fertility or not,...