This paper makes a fresh attempt at characterizing optimal commodity taxes. Under the usual assumptions, an extremely simple expression of second-best commodity taxes is derived, showing tax rates as functions of observable variables only, rather than as functions of unobservable variables such...

Democratic countries with substantial inequality and where people believe that success depends on connections and luck induce political support for high tax rates and generous welfare states. Traditional wisdom is that such policies harm the economy, but there is not much evidence that countries...

Many political issues like abortion, gay marriage or assisted suicide are strongly contested because individuals have preferences not only over their own choice but also about other individuals? actions. How should society decide these issues? This paper compares three regimes (centralization,...

Multinational firms are known to shift profits and countries are known to compete over shifty profits. Two major principles for corporate taxation are Separate Accounting (SA) and Formula Apportionment (FA). These two principles have very different qualities when it comes to preventing profit...

We consider the evolution of preferences when trade occurs between two countries. We show that if one country is much larger than the other, its preferences can eventually take over the preferences of the second country. This result may provide an explanation of why small countries sometimes...

Deposit systems for one-way beverage containers are widely supported by green activists and have been implemented in several countries. This paper analyzes whether such deposit systems can optimally internalize the externalities that result when consumers dump these containers. It is shown that...

This article compares an ACE system with a CBIT system in an open economy. Using a realoption approach we show that, if a firm can decide when to invest, a tradeoff is found. According to traditional wisdom, a high-income firm investing in an ACE system faces a heavier tax burden at each...

We study the role of tax share and transparency of governance on growth and stagnation. A local government maximizes its private benefits using two activities. The first one consists of providing local public goods that help local firms to increase profits, thus enlarging tax revenue. The second...

A country with Cournot competition and free entry experiences an increase of its market size either due to economic growth or international integration of goods markets. The implied increase in competition leads to shrinking mark-ups and forces firms to reduce overhead costs relative to output....