Optimality conditions and comparative static properties of the optimal Mirrleesian nonlinear income tax are obtained for a nite population and quasilinear-in-consumption preferences. Contrary to Weymark (1987) who considers quasilinear-in-leisure preferences, the linearity with respect to gross income, which is observed by the government and used as a tax base, is lost. A reduced-form optimal i...

OBJECTIVE To examine in Peru the nature of dual practice (doctors holding two jobs at once - usually public sector doctors with private practices), the factors that influence individuals' decisions to undertake dual practice, the conditions faced when doing so and the potential role of regulatory intervention in this area. METHODS The study entailed qualitative interviews with a sample of twe...

AIDS-related morbidity and mortality are expected to have a large economic impact in rural Malawi, because they reduce the time that adults can spend on production for subsistence and on income-generating activities. However, households may compensate for production losses by reallocating tasks among household members. The data demands for measuring these effects are high, limiting the amount o...

Ethnographic immersion among homeless heroin addicts in San Francisco documents far more risky practices than the public health literature routinely reports. The logics of street-based income-generating strategies and the moral economy of social networking among self-identified "dope fiends" results in almost daily shares of drug preparation paraphernalia. Public health researchers need to reco...

This paper considers the effects of changes in the income distribution in an economy where agents’ utility depends both on consumption and on their rank in the distribution of consumption of a positional good. We introduce a new methodology to compare the behavior of agents that occupy the same rank in the two different income distributions but typically have different levels of incomes, and an...

Internation comparisons of average national incomes omit important information about leisure, home production, health, etc. They are also bedevilled by index number problems. This paper suggests ways of combining working hours and life-expectancy with income comparisons, and shows that the fixed-price indexes of real income, such as those in the Penn World Table, substantially understate the in...

Doctors are involved in voluntary service more commonly than both the community and our professional colleagues realise. Traditionally, doctors are seen as busy healers who never stop looking after the sick and/or making a fortune from their daily activities. On the other hand, many in society think doctors are typically earning such high incomes that they can readily afford to volunteer their ...

In a sample of Tanzanian formal sector workers the vast majority have a desire for working longer hours in their main job, and supplement earnings through participation in informal production. Determinants of participation in informal production are examined through estimation of structural-form Logit models. A new way around the problem of measuring incomes from informal production is suggeste...

We analyze a macroeconomic model of monopolistic competition in which consumers earn unequal incomes. When preferences are non-homothetic, the distribution of income affects equilibrium mark-ups and equilibrium product diversity. Inequality, Market Power, and Product Diversity Reto Foellmi, University of Zurich Josef Zweimüller, University of Zurich, CESifo, IZA, and CEPR∗†