We illustrate a novel informational feature of education, which the government may utilize. Discretionary decisions of individuals to acquire education may serve as an additional signal (to earned labor income) on the underlying unobserved innate earning ability, thereby mitigating the...

Minimum wage legislation is a standard policy tool in most countries. However, the overall merits of minimum wage are controversial due to its potential adverse effects on unemployment. In this paper we construct a simple model in which minimum wage plays an important re-distributive role,...

We analyse the question of optimal taxation in a dual economy, when the government is concerned about the distribution of labour income. Income inequality is caused by the presence of sunk capital investments, which creates a "good jobs" sector due to the capture of quasi-rents by trade unions....

Taxing internationally mobile factors of production has been dismissed as an inefficient means of raising tax revenue. This paper addresses the question of whether it is efficient to tax capital at source when labor markets and the taxation of lumpsum income suffer from imperfections. Four...

Empirical literature on preferences for wealth taxation almost exclusively focuses on either the emotionally loaded estate tax or rather general concepts of redistributive preferences. Yet, it remains unclear whether the exceptional opposition towards the estate tax is applicable to other...

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model where employers may avoid making social security contributions by offering some workers "secondary contracts". When calibrated using aggregate tax revenue data, the model delivers estimates of secondary "off the books" employment that are...

This paper examines the set of Pareto efficient allocations in a finite period Mirrlees (1971, 1976) economy; each period represents a lifetime for an agent who cares about the utility of his descendants. In making Pareto comparisons, we use an interim concept of efficiency, and consider an...

This paper addresses the modern optimal tax progressivity literature, which clarifies the key role of the behavioral response to taxation and accounts for the incomes of the superrich being qualitatively different than others. Some may be "superstars", for whom small differences in talent are...

This article explores whether altruistic preferences toward households in poor high-temperature countries stimulate global warming policies within rich low-temperature countries that avoids damage from global warming. The article analyzes optimal carbon taxes on commodities within such rich...

I analyze whether wage policies -- like minimum wages and wage subsidies -- can add value to an optimal non-linear earnings tax scheme in a perfectly competitive labour market. Jobs in the labour market differ along two margins: intensity (labour effort) and duration (labour hours). Three key...