Public pension schemes can be designed either as capital reserve systems or as unfunded (or pay-as-you-go) schemes. In the literature it has been alleged that unfunded schemes are intergenerationally efficient in Pareto's sense. Here we show that this holds only if contributions to the system...

Recent proposals for capital income tax reform are considered. The analysis focusses on German taxes, but experiences from abroad as well as the European Savings Directive are also taken into account. Given the present complexity of capital income taxation, the crucial question is whether or not...

The article investigates whether compulsory old age provisions are justified from an economic point of view. According to a standard argument, some people would not provide sufficiently for their old age in the absence of a compulsory pension system – they would become a charge to the public....

Mirrlees' optimal income tax formula has never been proven rigorously, and it is hard to understand it in economic terms. We prove an analogous formula for an economy with finitely many persons. This is easy and allows a simple economic interpretation. Thereafter, Mirrlees' original formula is...