This paper models voters’ preferences over central versus local education policies when there are private alternatives. Education is financed by income taxes and individuals are mobile between communities. Public education levels are chosen by majority vote. Contrary to conventional wisdom, centralisation may benefit the rich and poor, while the middle class prefer decentralised education. The ...

In this paper we examine the impact on the salaries of free agents in Major League Baseball of differences in state and local individual income taxes between major league cities, in an attempt to see if income taxes affect player salaries. Our basic specification suggests that each percentage point of an income tax raises free agent salaries by $21 to $24 thousand; other estimates indicate even...

This articles studies the optimal tax mix (taxes on income and commodities) under asymmetric information in a two-type model, when individuals make relative consumption comparisons. The model includes both positional and nonpositional goods, taking into account the fact that relative concerns matter for some but not for all commodities. We nd that in general the whole tax system is a ected by t...

While acknowledging the importance of fairness and the need to avoid creating disincentives in the design of tax reform, the Henry Review recommends a simplified Personal Income Tax and child payments withdrawn on a single family income test. This paper shows that the proposed reforms would consolidate the existing family tax system, which clearly fails in terms of both fairness and disincentiv...

This paper explores the effect of personal income taxes on redistribution when labour supply reactions are taken into consideration. The results indicate that the classical non-behavioural results on redistribution are not necessarily satisfied in a more general behavioural framework. In this respect, it is shown that the relevant transition to measure redistribution is not the transition from ...

This paper examines optimal income tax progressivity when avoidance responses to taxation are important, and can be controlled at some cost by the government. A simple example shows that ignoring the fact that avoidance can be controlled that the leak in Okun’s bucket can be fixed can lead to misleading implications about the optimal degree of tax rate progressivity. The paper then generalizes ...

This article describes a way to finance universal health care coverage that preserves much of the current financing system and replaces funds obtained from regressive sources with revenue from more progressive ones. New funding would be needed for 24 percent of health expenditures and would be raised through an increase in the federal personal income tax. Premiums are eliminated since their cos...

The OASI eligibility provisions include a retirement test (or earnings test), and in 1979 aged beneficiaries who are under age 72 give up $1 in current benefits for each $2 of annual earnings above $4,500. If the retirement test were eliminated, total OASI payouts would increase because aged workers would no longer forfeit benefits. Aged workers also might increase earnings or delay retirement ...

The impact of pollution and abatement policy within a stochastic endogenous growth model is analyzed. Environmental care is provided by the government and financed through income taxation and government bonds. Due to environmental preferences and partial perception of the individual’s impact on pollution, government debt influences equilibrium growth. Hence, there is an additional growth effect...