We investigate a game of delegated portfolio management such as hedge funds featuring risk-neutrality, hidden types, and hidden actions. We show that capital gain tax plays the decisive role in solving the incentive problem. We characterize the constrained optimal fee scheme and capital gain tax rate; the fee after taxation must be linear and affected by gains and losses in a low-powered and sy...

In this note, we introduce increasing returns to Bovenberg and Mooij’s (1994) model as generalised in Fullerton (1997) and use an example to show that (1) even with a distortionary labor tax, the optimal environmental levy is greater than the Pigouvian rate; (2) the difference between tax on the “dirty” good and the “clean” good is also greater than the Pigouvian tax; (3) under certain circumst...

The strength of the behavioral response to a tax rate change depends on the environment individuals operate in, and may be manipulated by instruments controlled by the government. We first derive a measure of the social benefit to affecting this elasticity. The paper then examines this effect in the solution to the optimal income taxation problem when such an instrument is available, first in a...

Based on a numerical model where climate change affects productivity, the second-best optimal carbon tax is found to exceed marginal social damage by 53 percent, and " marginal private damage " (aggregate households' marginal willingness to pay) by 73 percent. Annual welfare gains from carbon taxation are estimated at $3.58 billion when marginal damage is $40 per ton; employment also increases....

Motivated by the high public employment, and the public wage premia observed in Europe, a Real-Business-Cycle model, calibrated to German data (1970-2007), is set up with a richer government spending side, and an endogenous private-public sector labor choice. To illustrate the effects of fiscal policy, two regimes are compared and contrasted to one another exogenous vs. optimal (Ramsey) policy ...

a r t i c l e i n f o We present a model of tax competition for real investment and profits and show that the presence of tax havens in some cases increases the tax revenue of countries. In the first part of the paper, we argue that tax competition for profits is likely to be imperfect in the sense that the jurisdiction with the lowest tax rate does not necessarily attract all shifted profits. ...

This paper studies optimal taxation in a Dixit–Stiglitz model of monopolistic competition. In this setting, taxes may be used as an instrument to o¤set distortions caused by producer markups. Since markups tend to be higher in industries where …rms face less elastic demand, tax rates will be pushed lower in these industries. This tends to work against the familiar inverse elasticities intuition...

The paper discusses the implications of optimal tax theory for the debates on uniform commodity taxation and neutral capital income taxation. While strong administrative and political economy arguments in favor of uniform and neutral taxation remain, recent advances in optimal tax theory suggest that the information needed to implement the differentiated taxation prescribed by optimal tax theor...