The paper identifies a necessary and sufficient condition for a deterministic local optimum to be locally improved upon by a stochastic deviation. When this condition is satisfied, a method to construct the stochastic allocations that increase the objective is provided. This technique is applied...

This note characterizes, in a partial equilibrium economy with a single agent, which commodities should be taxed whenever there is only one available tax rate. We show that commodities with low price elasticities should be imposed; luxuries are eventually exempted.

This paper analyzes the optimal structure of indirect taxation when the number of available tax rates is smaller than the number of taxable commodities. Such a constraint requires to choose the levels of tax rates and the groups of commodities that will be taxed at equal rates (or exempted). In...

L'idée qu'une baisse des cotisations sociales compensée par une hausse de la TVA pourrait favoriser l'emploi et la compétitivité fait l'objet de débats. Nous montrons ici qu'une telle mesure n'est pas neutre à long terme : à situation budgétaire inchangée, les effets des allégements de...

Indirect taxes contribute to a sizeable part of government revenues around the world. Typically there are few different tax rates, and the goods are partitioned into classes associated with each rate. The present paper studies how to group the goods in these few classes. We take as given the...

This paper compares the most significant expectational stability criteria that have been used to assess the plausibility of perfect foresight trajectories in forward-looking dynamical systems: determinacy of trajectories, absence of neighbour sunspot trajectories, and convergence of " evolutive...

One usually identifies bubble solutions to linear rational expectations models by extra components (irrelevant lags) arising in addition to market fundamentals. Although there are still many solutions relying on a minimal set of state variables, i.e., relating in equilibrium the current state of...

Linear models with infinite horizon generally admit infinitely many rational expectations solutions. Consequently, some additional selection devices are needed to narrow the set of relevant solutions. The viewpoint of this paper is that a solution will be more likely to arise if it is locally...

An optimal contract may involve randomization when the agents differ in their attitudes towards risk, so that randomization enables the principal to relax the incentive constraints. The paper provides a necessary and sufficient condition for local random deviations to be welfare improving in a...

This note characterizes the optimal base for commodity taxation in the presence of administrative fixed costs varying across goods. For low tax rates, the optimal base comprises all commodities whose discouragement index is greater than the ratio of their administrative costs to the tax they yield.