During the 1950s and 1960s, many economists were convinced that externalities were a cause of "market failures" -- because individuals are not capable of internalizing the costs their actions impose to others -- and therefore that the intervention of the state was necessary to allow an efficient...

Dieser Beitrag geht der Frage nach, welche Faktoren damit in Zusammenhang stehen, wie viele Jahre ein Kind vor Schuleintritt eine Betreuungs- und Bildungseinrichtung besucht und ob die Dauer des Besuchs von Kindertageseinrichtungen mit dem späteren Schultyp in Verbindung steht. Die empirische...

In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income increases. One needs this parameter for cost-benefit analysis, for optimal taxation and for the (Atkinson) measurement of inequality. We estimate this parameter using four large...

Do other peoples' incomes reduce the happiness which people in advanced countries experience from any given income? And does this help to explain why in the U.S., Germany and some other advanced countries, happiness has been constant for many decades? The answer to both questions is "Yes". We...

The government’s choices of the corporate tax rate and public investment are interdependent. In particular, they both respond positively to the other. Therefore, international tax competition not only drives corporate tax rates to lower levels but might also affect negatively the stock of...

We characterize the Laffer curves for labor taxation and capital income taxation quantitatively for the US, the EU-14 and individual European countries by comparing the balanced growth paths of a neoclassical growth model featuring ”constant Frisch elasticity” (CFE) preferences. We derive...

This paper reviews recent developments in the study of the so-called "double dividend", i.e. the possibility of improving the environment and, at the same time, reducing the distortions of the tax system through revenue-neutral green taxes. Recent modeling advances are considered at both the...

This paper analyses the costs and benefits of a fiscal reform designed to simultaneously increase environmental quality and employment. The investigation is carried out using an econometric general equilibrium model in which the labour market is unionised and segmented, i.e. in which demand,...

If the precautionary principle must become the guide of the international community for environmental protection policies, an economic interpretation of the principle is in order. The analysis of case studies and a survey of the recent decision theoretic literature show on the one hand, the...

In this paper we use a simple climate model with endogenous environmental technical change in order to analyse the effects on equity and efficiency of different degrees of restrictions on trade in the market for pollution permits. The model is obtained by incorporating in Nordhaus and Yang...