A large share of public funds is spent on private goods (education, health care, day care, etc.). This paper integrates two different approaches to the analysis of public provision of private goods. While normative public economics has established an efficiency case for such provision, the...

Taking a piecemeal tax reform approach to tax analysis in the spirit of Feldstein (1976), we establish a framework for assessing perturbations of the income tax schedule. It decomposes a reform into a change in tax level and a structural reform part. Focussing on the latter, the analysis singles...

The incidence and efficiency losses of taxes have usually been analysed in isolation from public expenditures. This negligence of the expenditure side may imply a serious misperception of the effects of marginal tax rates. The reason is that part of the marginal tax may in fact be payment for...

Much of the literature on externalities has considered taxes and direct regulation as alternative policy instruments. Both instruments may in practice be imperfect, reflecting informational deficiencies and other limitations. We analyse the use of taxes and regulation in combination, to control...

Much of the literature on externalities has considered taxes and direct regulation as alternative policy instruments. Both instruments may in practice be imperfect, reflecting informational deficiencies and other limitations. We analyse the use of taxes and regulation in combination, to control...

We present a scheme for analysing income tax perturbations, applied to a real Norwegian tax reform during 2016 - 2018. The framework decomposes the reform into a structural reform part and a tax level effect. The former consists of a distributional impact and a social effi ciency effect measured...

An important question is whether VAT exemption of financial services is a desirable property or whether it is justified only due to practical and administrative necessity. This paper singles out a number of financial services for discussion of this issue in a context allowing for other taxes and...

Should we exempt the services of insurance companies from VAT? Addressing this issue, the paper distinguishes between insurance against a general loss of resources and a loss of a specific commodity (property insurance). There is a case for exempting the former kind of insurance, but not the...