Several studies show cases where the Samuelson rule holds, or where the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) equals one within optimized tax systems. The conditions for the original Samuelson rule to hold in these studies are quite restrictive, and MCF measures employed are not consistent with...

We consider two models of lump sum taxation in pure exchange economy in which the state imposes taxes on (or offers financial aid to) economic agents characterized by their demand functions and initial resources. In the first model the state has its own preferences and uses the collected money...

It is an important difference in different measures of the marginal cost of public funds whether to take into account the "revenue effect" emphasized by Atkinson and Stern (1974). This note tries to reconcile two competing measures from a general viewpoint. We demonstrate that the revenue effect...

We analyse how vertical or horizontal fiscal equalization affects the overprovision of local public goods due to vertical fiscal externality, when there is tax evasion. The regional governments overspending incentive is examined both in case of a fiscal equalization based on pretax earned income...

There still seems to be some confusion about the consequences of normalisations in the optimal taxation litterature. We claim that: 1) Normalisations do not matter for the real solution of optimal taxation problem. 2) Normalisations do matter for good characterisations of the solutions to...

This working paper computes the marginal cost of public funds associated with the reform of the Spanish Personal Income Tax, in force since 1999. Departing from a partial equilibrium framework, we simulate the reform using the working population of the Spanish wave of the European Community...

In this note we discuss how to treat taxes in a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). In particular we relate the shadow price of taxes in CBA to the concepts the marginal cost of public funds MCPF) and the marginal excess burden (MEB) of taxes. In particular we demonstrate that the MCPF is equal to one...

This paper examines the Laffer effect in the Ramsey tax-model with linear consumption taxes and a representative consumer. It is assumed that the private goods and the public good are weakly separable. It is demonstrated that if all of the private goods are weak gross complements to each other,...