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作者：Ottaviano, GIP; Thisse, JF
作者单位：Universite Catholique Louvain; Bocconi University; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Ecole des Ponts ParisTech
摘要：This paper tackles the issue of the optimality of agglomeration in a two-region economy with skilled/mobile and unskilled/immobile workers. The market leads to the optimal outcome when transport costs are high or low. However, for intermediate values, it yields agglomeration whereas dispersion is socially desirable. The reasons for this inefficiency are then analyzed. Finally, we show that competitive lobbying on factor mobility by the two groups of workers sustains the second best optimum. (C...
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作者：Mintz, J; Smart, M
作者单位：University of Toronto; University of Toronto; University of Toronto; University of Toronto
摘要：Investors frequently hold equity in pensions and other tax-exempt savings plans, despite the prediction of the standard model that they hold only bonds. We provide a new explanation for this empirical puzzle based on differences between tax-exempt and taxable assets in the tax treatment of capital losses. We show how limits on refundability of losses on taxable equities leads to diversity of investors' preferences for corporate leverage on the basis of tax rates. In the simplest equilibrium of...
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作者：Fisman, R; Gatti, R
作者单位：Columbia University; The World Bank; The World Bank
摘要：The relationship between decentralization of government activities and the extent of rent extraction by private parties is an important element in the recent debate on institutional design. The theoretical literature makes ambiguous predictions about this relationship, and it has remained little studied by empiricists. In this paper, we systematically examine this issue empirically, by looking at the cross-country relationship between fiscal decentralization and corruption, as measured by a nu...
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作者：Bingley, P; Lanot, G
作者单位：Aarhus University; Aarhus University; Keele University
摘要：In the simple framework of a static model for equilibrium wages and labour supplies, we show that the incidence of income tax on equilibrium wages can be measured independently from the individual labour supply elasticity. This extends recent work by [Journal of Labour Economics, 15(3) (1997) S72-S101] and [Journal of Public Economics, 65 (1997) 119-145], who estimate tax incidence on earnings, and [Econometrica, 66(4) (1998) 827-861] and [NBER Working Paper 5023 (1995)], who estimate labour s...
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作者：Ledyard, JO; Palfrey, TR
作者单位：California Institute of Technology
摘要：This paper compares the performance of simple voting rules, called referenda, to the performance of interim efficient mechanisms for the provision of a public good. In a referendum, voters simply vote for or against the provision of the public good, and production of the public good depends on whether or not the number of yes votes exceeds a prespecified threshold. Costs are shared equally. We show that in large populations for any interim efficient allocation rule, there exists a correspondin...
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作者：Laffont, JJ
作者单位：Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole
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作者：Boone, J; Bovenberg, L
作者单位：Tilburg University; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
摘要：This paper explores the optimal role of the tax system in alleviating labour-market imperfections and raising revenue. For this purpose, the standard search model of the labour market is extended by introducing scarce entrepreneurial talent and arbitrage between the supply and demand sides of the labour market. We study how these extensions affect the following two major implications of the standard model: (1) only the ad valorem component of the wage tax should be employed to raise revenue; (...
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作者：Susin, S
作者单位：New York University
摘要：Since the early 1980s, low-income housing subsidies have increasingly shifted towards vouchers which allow recipients to rent in the private market. By 1993, vouchers subsidized as many households as lived in traditional housing projects, although most low-income households did not receive any subsidies. This study investigates whether this policy has raised rents for unsubsidized poor households, as many analysts predicted when the program was conceived. The main finding is that low-income ho...
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作者：Cremer, H; Gahvari, F
作者单位：University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Universite de Toulouse; Universite de Toulouse; Institut Universitaire de France
摘要：This paper studies the second-best tax design problem when emissions are publicly unobservable but can be discovered through costly monitoring. A representative firm in industry chooses its emissions and declarations to maximize its expected profits. The paper shows: The Pigouvian rule of equating the marginal private benefit of emissions in production to the marginal social damage of emissions is modified to take account of the resource costs of monitoring and enforcement; emissions from diff...
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作者：Gruber, J; Saez, E
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：A central tax policy parameter that has recently received much attention, but about which there is substantial uncertainty, is the overall elasticity of taxable income. We provide new estimates of this elasticity which address identification problems with previous work, by exploiting a long panel of tax returns to study a series of tax reforms throughout the 1980s. This identification strategy also allows us to provide new evidence on both the income effects of tax changes on taxable income, a...
