In many countries there is a deep concern about shortages of Science and Engineering workers (S&E). This article focuses on the effectiveness of policies aimed at stimulating the supply of S&E workers in the Netherlands. Despite the 'common wisdom' of severe and increasing shortages, we do not...

We analyse optimal carbon taxes, optimal redistribution within and between non-overlapping generations, and optimal spending levels on climate abatement and adaptation. A positive probability of unexpected large increases in CO2 emissions results in a lower discount rate for global warming...

A flat tax rate on labour income has gained popularity in European countries. This article assesses the attractiveness of such a flat tax in achieving redistributive objectives with the smallest distortions to employment. We do so by using a detailed applied general equilibrium model for the...

This paper develops a Mirrlees (1971) framework with heterogeneous agents to analyze optimal redistributive taxes, optimal provision of public goods and the marginal cost of public funds (MCF). Standard MCF measures are shown to suffer from three defects: i) The MCF for the (non-individualized)...

This paper extends the Mirrlees (1971) model of optimal income redistribution with optimal corrective taxes to internalize consumption externalities. It is demonstrated that the optimal second-best tax on an externality-generating good should not be corrected for the marginal cost of public...

This paper analyzes optimal linear commodity taxes joint with non-linear income taxes. We provide optimal tax rules based on empirically observable elasticities, earnings and commodity demands. We demonstrate that commodities should be taxed/subsidized if – conditional on earnings – doing so...

This paper extends the Mirrlees (1971) model of optimal non-linear income taxation with a monitoring technology that allows the government to verify labor effort at a positive, but non-infinite cost. We analyze the joint determination of the non-linear monitoring and tax schedules and the...