This paper develops an infinite horizon model of public spending and taxation in which policy decisions are determined by legislative bargaining. The policy space incorporates both productive and distributive public spending and distortionary taxation. The productive spending is investing in a public good that benefits all citizens (e.g., national defense or air quality) and the distributive sp...

We consider redistributional taxation between people with and without human capital if education is endogenous and if individuals differ in their perceptions about own ability. Those who see their ability as low like redistributive taxation because of the transfers it generates. Those who see their ability as high may also like redistributive taxation because it stops other people receiving edu...

The recent literature on taxation and growth has stressed the optimality of a zero long-run taxation on all accumulative factors of production. For a given path of government spending, the optimal tax plan requires the government to build up a positive stock of public wealth in the short run in the long-run, government spending can be financed with the income accruing from the management of the...

In the context of common agency adverse-selection games we illustrate that the revelation principle cannot be applied to study equilibria of the multi-principal games. We then demonstrate that an extension of the taxation principle – what we term the “delegation principle” – can be used to characterize the set of all common agency equilibria. JEL Classification: D82, L51.

We investigate the dynamic general equilibrium effects of introducing a social assistance program to elderly informal sector workers in developing countries. We find that the extension of such “retirement benefits” in environments with lacking private sector risksharing mechanisms results in welfare increases and relatively minor efficiency losses. Our results suggest that welfare gains attribu...

Alfred Schütz’s 1927 essay on capital income taxation is examined in the contexts of the evolution of the German progressive income tax, the fiscal and monetary crises of the time, and Schütz’s relationship to the Austrian school of economics. JEL classification: B3.

Differential tax analysis is used to show how the optimal mix of inflation tax and direct taxation changes with the relative size of the hidden economy. The larger the relative size of the hidden economy, the smaller the optimal ratio of direct tax to inflation tax. Anecdotal empirical evidence supports this result. JEL Classification: E62, H21, H26, O17.

Optimal Piecewise Linear Income Taxation Given its significance in practice, piecewise linear taxation has received relatively little attention in the literature. This paper offers a simple and transparent analysis of its main characteristics. We fully characterize optimal tax parameters for the cases in which budget sets are convex and nonconvex respectively. A numerical analysis of a discrete...

The PaPer examines the shifts in attitudes to foreign investment; charts the dimensions and composition of capital flows to develeping countries; outlines existing barriers and the effects of taxation on these flows, and critically examines the demand for their regulation in the light of the Asian crisis. JEL classification: F3, F21, F23 Address: Dept. of Economics, UCLA, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Lo...