We provide an explanation for why estate taxation is surprisingly little used over the world, given the skewness of the estate distribution. Taxing estates implies meddling with intra-family decisions, which may be frown upon by many. At the same time, the concentration of estates means that a...

The Atkinson-Stiglitz Theorem shows that with weakly separable preferences, differential commod- ity taxes are not needed if an optimal nonlinear income tax is imposed. Redistributive objectives can be achieved with the income tax alone even if goods differ considerably in their income...

We study the optimal design of a social security system when individuals differ in health status and occupation. Health status is private information but is imperfectly correlated with occupation: individuals in harsh occupations are more likely to be in poor health. We explore the desirability...