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作者：Laffont, JJ; Pouyet, J
作者单位：Universite PSL; Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS); Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
摘要：We study the choice of the regulatory structure when a firm engages in different activities for different countries. Under decentralization regulatory contracts suffer from two opposite distortions: the competition between regulatory authorities leads to too high-powered contracts; however, with a dispersed ownership structure, contracts tend to be too low-powered. For sufficiently substitutable activities, decentralization always leads to an inefficient drift towards fixed-price contracts. No...
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作者：Saez, E
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：This paper analyzes the optimal treatment of tax expenditures. It develops an optimal tax model where individuals derive utility from spending on a contribution good such as charitable giving. The contribution good has also a public good effect on all individuals in the economy. The government imposes linear taxes on earnings and on the contribution good so as to maximize welfare. The government may also finance directly the contribution good out of tax revenue. Optimal tax and subsidy rates o...
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作者：Finkelstein, A
作者单位：Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：This paper examines the implications of minimum standards for insurance markets. I study the imposition of binding minimum standards on the market for voluntary private health insurance for the elderly. The central estimates suggest that the introduction of the standards was associated with an 8 percentage point (25%) decrease in the proportion of the population with coverage in the affected market, with no evidence of substitution toward other, unregulated sources of insurance coverage. To ex...
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作者：Messner, M; Polborn, MK
作者单位：University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Bocconi University; Bocconi University
摘要：We consider a society that has to elect an official who provides a public service for the citizens. Potential candidates differ in their competence and every potential candidate has private information about his opportunity cost to perform the task of the elected official. We develop a new citizen candidate model with a unique equilibrium to analyze citizens' candidature decisions. Under some weak additional assumptions, bad candidates run with a higher probability than good ones, and for unat...
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作者：Cremer, H; Lozachmeur, JM; Pestieau, P
作者单位：Universite de Toulouse; Universite de Toulouse; University of Liege; Universite Catholique Louvain
摘要：It is often argued that implicit taxation on continued activity of elderly workers is responsible for the widely observed trend towards early retirement. In a world of laissez-faire or of first-best efficiency, there would be no such implicit taxation. The point of this paper is that, when first-best redistributive instruments are not available, because some variables are not observable, the optimal policy does imply a distortion of the retirement decision. Consequently, the inducement of earl...
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作者：Fullerton, D; Gan, L
作者单位：University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin
摘要：Graduated income tax rates and transfer programs create piecewise-linear budget constraints that consist of budget segments and kink points. With any change in these tax rules, each individual may switch between a kink point and a budget segment, between two budget segments, or between two kink points. With errors in the estimated labor supply equation, the new choice is uncertain, and so the welfare effects of a tax change are uncertain. We propose a simulation-based method to compute expecte...
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作者：Cox, D; Hansen, BE; Jimenez, E
作者单位：University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; The World Bank; Boston College
摘要：In recent years there has been burgeoning interest in how private transfers respond to household income, or transfer derivatives. Much of it is fueled by the specter of crowding out: the more responsive are private transfers, the more likely they could be supplanted by expansions in public transfers, weakening or destroying the latter's distributive impact. Yet there is also an emerging consensus that actual transfer derivatives are trivial, at least for the United States, suggesting that crow...
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作者：Figlio, DN; Lucas, ME
作者单位：State University System of Florida; University of Florida; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：This paper explores the effects of high grading standards on student test performance in elementary school. While high standards have been advocated by policy-makers, business groups, and teacher unions, very little is known about their effects on outcomes. Most of the existing research on standards is theoretical, generally finding that standards have mixed effects on students. However, very little empirical work has to date been completed on this topic. This paper provides the first empirica...
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作者：Gruber, J; Köszegi, B
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要：One of the most cogent criticisms of excise taxes is their regressivity, with lower income groups spending a much larger share of their income on goods such as cigarettes than do higher income groups. We argue that traditional quantity-based measures of incidence are only appropriate under a very restrictive time-consistent model of consumption of sin goods. A model that is much more consistent with existing evidence on smoking decisions is a time-inconsistent formulation where excise taxes on...
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作者：Hines, JR
作者单位：University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：This paper analyzes efficient government reactions to unanticipated tax avoidance. Quickly reforming tax laws to reduce the effectiveness of new tax avoidance techniques prevents widespread adoption, but indirectly encourages the rapid development of new avoidance methods if prior users are permitted to retain their tax benefits. Tax reforms that immediately prevent new avoidance mean that innovators need not fear imitation by competitors, and cannot rely on copying the innovations of others. ...
