The optimal carbon tax mechanism for managing carbon emissions

Along Pigouvian lines, the carbon tax not only exceeds the carbon emission damage imposed on society, but ignores the potential cost from deliberate carbon abatement, which in turn challenges the stability and optimality of the Pigouvian solution. For correcting these distortions, this paper amends the standard Pigouvian version by using piecewise tax functions to approximate the social damage curve of carbon emissions. An optimal carbon tax mechanism is designed, where the tax is endogenously determined from social welfare maximization. With the help of a modification instrument, the carbon tax corrects emitters’ non-optimal individual decision and the social optimum is implemented efficiently. How to put the carbon tax into practice is examined under both the deterministic and stochastic modeling settings. In both cases, we demonstrate the structure and effectiveness of the carbon tax in detail. Moreover, a flexible adjustment tax scheme is proposed, which may produce the double-dividend effect that reduces carbon emissions and relieves financial burden of carbon abatement simultaneously. These may improve the application of market-based carbon-reducing tools in public management and pollution regulation.     

Open spaces,revenue sharing,and urban structure

Open spaces and revenue sharing are analyzed within an urban-spatial framework. When households do not observe the price of the public good directly and because of the external economy arising from city size, the local government cannot determine the optimal property tax rate from empirical observation of consumer behavior. The relation between the property tax rate and city size is indeterminate. When land is necessary for public good production, there is an optimal amount of revenue sharing. The property tax rate alone, only under exceptional circumstances, can be used to limit city size and the amount of land in housing production.     

Tax Competition and Revelation of Preferences for Public Expenditure

This paper considers a federal country composed of local jurisdictions that differ in their inhabitants' tastes for public goods, and which finance local public expenditure through a source-based tax on capital income. The taste for public goods is the private information of local governments. The central government seeks an optimal policy, in which grants to local governments are conditioned on local tax rates. The uninformed central government seeks both to allocate capital efficiently among jurisdictions, and to induce jurisdictions to provide an efficient mix of private and public consumption. It is shown that there persist at this constrained optimum both some misallocation of capital and some violation of the Samuelson rule for optimal public good provision in every jurisdiction.     

Tax Policy Coordination, Vertical Externalities, and Optimal Taxation in a System of Hierarchical Governments

Tax policies of two levels of government (state and federal) with overlapping tax bases are considered. This overlap leads to “vertical” fiscal externalities are considered when several different commodities are in the tax base and the tax bases of the two levels of government may not be identical. When the governments share a tax base, the mix of combined taxes is optimal. With different tax bases, combined taxes are no longer optimal as federal tax rates are adjusted to reflect state public service levels. When grants are available, a welfare-maximizing mix of taxes and public services is obtained.     

Property value maximization and public sector efficiency

This paper analyses the efficiency implications of property value maximization. Communities are open, so that utilities are parametric to housing producers and the local government. Each local government chooses its public good output to maximize aggregate property value in the community, ignoring feedback effects on the composition of the housing stock. It is shown that this type of government behavior generates an equilibrium in which all communities are internally Pareto-efficient.     

On revenue recycling and the welfare effects of second-best congestion pricing in a monocentric city

This paper examines congestion taxes in a monocentric city with pre-existing labor taxation. When road toll revenue is used to finance labor tax cuts, 35% of the optimal road tax in our numerical model does not reflect marginal external congestion costs, but rather functions as a Ramsey–Mirrlees tax, i.e. an efficiency enhancing mechanism allowing for an indirect spatial differentiation of the labor tax. This adds a quite different motivation to road pricing, since welfare gains can be produced even in absence of congestion. We find that the optimal road tax is non-monotonic across space, reflecting the different impacts of labor supply elasticity and marginal utility of income, which both vary over space. The relative efficiencies of some archetype second-best pricing schemes (cordon toll, flat kilometer tax) are high (84% and 70% respectively). When road toll revenue is recycled lump-sum, the optimal toll lies below its Pigouvian level. Extensions in a bimodal framework show that the optimality of using road toll revenue to subsidize public transport depends on the initial inefficiency in public transport pricing.     

General equilibrium and optimal taxes

It is shown that if subsidies are not excessive, there exists a general competitive equilibrium in the presence of a complex tax structure. Furthermore, under certain continuity assumptions, a tax structure which is optimal from the social point of view can be determined. Procedures maximize quasi-concave after tax profit functions. Consumers have convex budget sets reflect- ing their income from sales and profits minus taxes on fixed income and progressive sales taxes. Their preferences are interdependent, intransitive and incomplete. The government provides public goods and determines the optimal tax regime on the basis of its preferences on the final competitive consumption allocation.     

Competition and optimal departures from stock market value maximization by firms

Models of firm decisionmaking under uncertainty have done a good job of explaining the implications of spanning and competitive behavior. An opportunity set dominance argument under these conditions predicts the optimality of stock market value maximization. This paper reexamines the firm's choice rule assuming competitive behavior but without the restrictive assumption of spanning. The resulting rule breaks into two parts consisting of the traditional market value maximization component plus another term depending on the welfare effect of a change in the contract structure. Necessary and sufficient conditions, including spanning, for this term to be zero are derived.     

Federalism,taxation, and economic growth

We present a model of endogenous growth where government provides a productive public good financed by income and capital taxes. In equilibrium, a decentralized government chooses tax policy to maximize economic growth, while a centralized government does not do so. Furthermore, these conclusions hold regardless of whether governments are beholden to a median voter or are rent-maximizing Leviathans. However, a decentralized government will under-provide public goods which benefit citizens directly, while a central government beholden to the median voter will optimally invest in such public goods.     

Mobile Labor, Multiple Tax Instruments, and Tax Competition

The tax competition literature shows that local governments keep property tax rates inefficiently low to prevent capital outflows, thereby underproviding local public goods. This paper adds mobile labor and an alternative tax instrument to the model. Jurisdictions have access to a property tax levied on land and capital, plus either a head tax or a labor tax. Scale economies in public good provision create incentives to use the property tax, but these incentives are not accompanied by increased incentives to underprovide public goods. In contrast, underprovision is associated with the use of a distortionary labor tax.     

How economic integration affects the vertical structure of the public sector

This paper investigates the impact of economic integration on the vertical structure of the public sector within a country. To tackle this issue we set up a model of fiscal federalism, where economic integration is assumed to affect central government tax revenues. The main findings are that when an increase of the impact of economic integration brings about a reduction in central government tax revenues, under certain conditions: (a) it reduces central government expenditure; (b) it reduces general government expenditure; (c) it increases local taxation; (d) it increases the degree of public sector decentralization. Quite interestingly, these results are consistent with different patterns of local public spending and grants to local government.     

The Role of Symmetry between the Revenue and the Expenditure Side of the Government Budget in the Debate about the Potential Negative Effects of Tax Competition

The effects of capital tax competition are reconsidered in this paper incorporating the argument that the expenditure structure of public budget should reflect its revenue structure. The paper offers a small open economy model where capital and labour tax revenues are used exclusively on the provision of public inputs. It is shown that if the revenue side of the government budget exactly matches the expenditure side that is if industrial public goods are financed by both private production factors with the weights reflecting the contributions of public inputs to the private factor productivity then public inputs are provided optimally even in the presence of tax competition.     

资本弱化税务筹划分析

现代资本结构理论通过资本结构优化实现企业价值最大化。而企业所得税法中资本弱化反避税条例改变了资本弱化税务筹划的税收管制环境和避税空间,所以研究新环境下的资本弱化筹划管理具有现实意义。     

Tax competition,uniform assessment,and the benefit principle

In previous discussions it has been argued that tax competition between local governments results in a tax burden on business that is less than the cost of public services for business and in suboptimal levels of public expenditures for residents. However, this conclusion has never been substantiated by a full theoretical treatment. Here a theoretical model of tax competition is developed between metropolitan areas, with labor perfectly immobile and two local public goods, one for residents and one for business. For “plausible” parameter values, numerical solutions of the optimality conditions are computed by means of a nonlinear programming algorithm.     

Optimal Fiscal Regime in a Spatial Duopoly

We investigate a horizontally differentiated duopoly in which a public authority can either tax or subsidize firms, in order to induce duopolists to choose the socially optimal locations. The policy proposed here is such that welfare maximization is achieved by directly affecting firms' location without explicitly modifying their price behavior.     

State and local tax competition in a spatial model with sales taxes and residential property taxes

This paper presents a theoretical model with a uniformly populated line that is divided into local jurisdictions (and/or states). If one level of government imposes sales and residential property taxes, and if the spatial extent of each taxing jurisdiction is positive and finite, then (in Nash equilibrium) the sales tax rate is less than residential property tax rate, housing consumption is suboptimal, and the public good is underprovided in each jurisdiction. If a very large state (or country) is divided into local jurisdictions, and if both levels of government choose tax rates endogenously, then under some assumptions there is an efficient outcome.     

A NOTE ON TRADE LIBERALIZATION, PUBLIC ABATEMENT, AND WELFARE

This paper extends Haibara (2006) in order to focus on the welfare consequences of a pollution tax and foreign aid financed for public abatement. The main finding is that environmental protection as a result of increasing a pollution tax by the aid recipient increases the optimal value of foreign aid chosen by the donor and reduces that of a tariff chosen by the recipient. This implies that international environmental cooperation is possible between the donor and the recipient.     

Transfer Prices: A Financial Perspective

The arguments for and against transfer pricing schemes so far have focused on profit‐seeking approaches based on tax differentials, or on evasion of government enforced goods and fund flow restrictions. This article shifts to a value‐seeking framework where transfer prices act as strategic tools that may enhance value for the multinational with a foreign affiliate by exploiting financial and/or tax arbitrage that also lead to ownership arbitrage. The results show that there is an optimal level of transfer price depending on the specific exchange rate distribution when the cost structure allows for a penalty for overcharging. Moreover, this article introduces a new form of tax arbitrage benefit of transfer prices that is based on present value of tax shields.     

央行铸币税和财政税收关系研究

本文在跨期的预付金模型理论基础之上,考察典型代理人效用最大化和政府损失函数最小化下铸币税和财政税收之间理论关系,分析显示通货膨胀率和税率相关性可正可负,其结论不同于“曼昆原则”。进一步研究显示政府支出对通货膨胀率与税率斜率的影响为负,预付金对通货膨胀率与税率的斜率影响也可正可负。本文实证结果表明税率和通货膨胀率正相关,但其内在机制不同于“曼昆原则”。实证显示政府支出对通货膨胀率与税率的斜率影响为负,预付金对通货膨胀率与税率的斜率影响为正,结果支持典型代理人效用最大化和政府损失函数最小化下模型的结论。