Although supply side theory may have been obvious to economists, it instigated a major change in the nature of tax policymaking through marginal rate cuts in both the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Also, the 1981 bill was the culmination of an era in which...

In our analytical general equilibrium model where two polluting inputs can be substitutes or complements in production, we study the effects of a tax on one pollutant in two cases: one where both pollutants face taxes and the second where the other pollutant is subject to a permit policy. In...

We build a simple analytical general equilibrium model and linearize it, to find a closed-from expression for the effect of a small change in carbon tax on leakage - the increase in emissions elsewhere. The model has two goods produced in two sectors or regions. Many identical consumers buy both...

While prior literature has identified various effects of environmental policy, this note uses the example of a proposed carbon permit system to illustrate and discuss six different types of distributional effects: (1) higher prices of carbon-intensive products, (2) changes in relative returns to...

Using three years of data from the 47 prefectures of Japan, we estimate behavior of households who simultaneously make discrete decisions about vehicle ownership and continuous decisions about driving distance. We use the estimated parameters to calculate elasticities and to simulate the effects...

The standard theory that the first-best tax on pollution is equal to marginal environmental damages has been extended in two directions. First, many polluting activities are difficult to tax because they are not market transactions, and so recent papers have shown that the same effects can be...

Building on the existing literature that examines the extent of redistribution in the Social Security system as a whole, this paper focuses more specifically on how Social Security affects the poor. This question is important because a Social Security program that reduces overall inequality by...