Majority Voting over Publicly Provided Goods, Redistribution, and Income Taxation

Federal, state, and many local governments make decisions that involve taxation, redistribution, and provision of public goods. Positive models to study these issues encounter the well‐known problem that majority‐voting equilibrium (MVE) may fail to exist in such multidimensional models. In this paper, with reasonable restrictions on preferences, I provide sufficient conditions for the existence of an MVE in a model with linear income tax and government expenditure policies that affect individual labor/leisure choices. My majority‐voting result takes account of the possibility that low‐skill individuals will drop out of the labor force under some tax and expenditure configurations.     

Step Returns in Threshold Public Goods: A Meta- and Experimental Analysis

One important determinant of voluntary contributions to public goods is the value of the public good relative to that of the forgone private good. Isaac, Walker and Thomas (1984) formalized this relation in the Marginal Per Capita Return (MPCR) and demonstrated its influence on the provision of linear public goods. This paper develops a parallel concept, in the context of a threshold public good, the Step Return (SR). After providing a meta-analysis of the effect of SR in previous experiments, we compare contributions in threshold public goods games with low, medium and high SRs. Results show that subjects respond to the SR in this setting just as they respond to the MPCR in the linear public goods setting: higher SRs lead to more contributions.     

Wealth Distribution and Optimal Inheritance Taxation in Life-cycle Economies with Intergenerational Transfers

Intergenerational transfers are introduced into a general equilibrium life-cycle model in order to explain observed levels of wealth heterogeneity. In our overlapping generations model, heterogenous agents face uncertain lifetime and leave both accidental and voluntary bequests to their children. Furthermore, agents face stochastic employment opportunities. The model is calibrated with regard to the characteristics of the US economy. Our results indicate that bequests only account for a small proportion of observed wealth heterogeneity. The introduction of an inheritance tax increases both welfare, as measured by the average lifetime utility of a newborn, and equality of the wealth distribution.
JEL classification : D 31; D 91; H 21; C 68; E 21     

Public Investment and Income Taxation: Redistribution vs. Productive Performance

This paper deals with government investment in a static two-type self-selection model of optimum income taxation. It is shown that the second-best investment rule is consistent with efficient production, provided that public investment has no influence on relative factor prices. Otherwise, however, redistributive income taxation implies that optimal investment expenditures exceed (or fall below) the efficient level as long as they raise (or decrease) the wage rate of the unskilled individuals relative to the wage rate of the skilled individuals.     

Redistribution and Subsidies for Higher Education

The financing of higher education through public spending imposes a transfer of resources from taxpayers to university students and their parents. We provide an explanation for this phenomenon. Those who attend institutions of higher education will earn more income in the future and will pay more taxes. People whose children do not receive higher education, however, should agree to help pay the cost of such education, providing that taxes are sufficiently high to ensure an adequate redistribution in favor of their own children at some time in the future.
JEL classification : D 71; H 21; H 52     

The Distributional Impact of Public Goods Provision: A Veil of Ignorance Approach

The veil of ignorance approach is used to consider the redistribution implied by different tax-benefit systems. Assuming a (hypothetical) ex-ante situation in which individuals lack any knowledge about their future income, redistribution from rich to poor can be seen as a form of insurance. Taking redistribution and insurance as synonymous, the analysis derives cases of redistributionally neutral systems of taxation and public good provision.
JEL classification : H 23; D 30;, H 41     

Heterogeneity and the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods

We investigate the effects of heterogeneity and incomplete information on aggregate contributions to a public good using the voluntary contribution mechanism. The non-linear laboratory environment has three-person groups as partners under varying conditions of information and communication. Bergstrom, Blum and Varian predict that increasing heterogeneity will have no effect on aggregate contributions in a no-communication environment. Ledyard conjectures a positive effect of incomplete information, a negative effect of heterogeneity, and a positive interaction of heterogeneity and incomplete information. We find that incomplete information has a small but significant negative effect. Heterogeneity has a positive effect on aggregate contributions, but its effects interact unexpectedly with communication. In a no-communication environment, heterogeneity in two dimensions (endowment and preferences) increases contributions substantially while heterogeneity in a single dimension (endowment or preferences) has little effect. In the communication environment we find the reverse. We also find a positive interaction between heterogeneity and incomplete information. Thus we reject the Bergstrom, Blume and Varian invariance result and provide mixed evidence on Ledyard's conjectures.     

Pollution,Private Investment in Healthcare,and Environmental Policy*

In this paper, we demonstrate that, in a two‐period overlapping‐generations model, the relationship between environmental taxation and economic activity (output level and growth) has an inverted‐U shape when we take into account the detrimental impact of pollution on health and the individual decision of each working‐age agent to improve her health. We also demonstrate that the link between environmental tax and lifetime welfare also has an inverted‐U shape, and that a tighter environmental policy might enhance economic activity while reducing steady‐state lifetime welfare. Finally, we investigate the social optimum and the determinants of the optimal environmental tax.     

Economic Integration and Public Provision of Education

This paper develops a model of fiscal competition in public provision of a private good: education. In this framework, the welfare enhancing effects of public education provision are shown to be reduced by increased student mobility when, like in the EU, countries are unable to set differentiated fees to foreign students. Indeed, the threat of attraction of foreigners who free-ride on the national education system may induce suboptimal levels of public education provision when (price) discrimination is forbidden. Alternatively, countries may try to escape regulation and avoid equal treatment of foreign students. The paper provides some empirical evidence of the existence of a fiscal externality in education at the EU level.     

Edgeworth and Lindahl–Foley equilibria of a General Equilibrium Model with Private Provision of Pure Public Goods

In this paper, we propose a definition of Edgeworth equilibrium for a private ownership production economy with (possibly infinitely) many private goods and a finite number of pure public goods. We show that Edgeworth equilibria exist whatever be the dimension of the private goods space and can be decentralized, in the finite and infinite dimensional cases, as Lindahl–Foley equilibria. Existence theorems for Lindahl–Foley equilibria are a by‐product of our results.     

Externality Policy Reform: A General Equilibrium Analysis

We characterize Pareto‐improving and equilibrium‐preserving policy reforms in a second‐best (Diamond/Mirrlees) world with a consumption externality. A counterintuitive finding is that, starting from an initial equilibrium with no direct quantity control on the externality, it is possible that all Pareto‐improving and equilibrium‐preserving directions of change require an increase in a negative externality. We provide intuition for these results by establishing a nexus between Guesnerie's approach to designing (tax) policy reforms and the standard Kuhn–Tucker technique for identifying the manifold of feasible Pareto‐optimal states, given the instruments available to the policy maker.     

Welfare Analysis of a Fiscal Reconstruction Policy in an Overlapping Generations Economy with Public Investment

Constructing an endogenously growing overlapping generations model with public investment, we examine the welfare effects of a fiscal reconstruction policy. In this paper we define a fiscal reconstruction policy as a policy where the government reduces its spending level without changing the tax revenue and allocates the surplus of the revenue to redeem public debt. We show that if government spending is not productive it is possible that a fiscal reconstruction policy improves the utilities of both the current and future generations, while if government spending is productive it can harm the utilities of both generations. Received February 26, 2002; revised version received July 8, 2002 Published online: February 17, 2003     

Factor Endowments and the Private Provision of Public Goods

The paper examines the consequences of increasing the size of the community in the standard model of the private provision of public goods when costs are variable. In contrast to an economy with fixed costs, the provision of the public good can fall with a larger community, and an increased provision of the public good is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for individual utility to rise. The paper also contributes to the literature on immiserizing growth in that it shows that capital accumulation can possibly result in lower utility for all individuals.     

融资激励和融资约束对PPP模式下公共产品提供效率的影响——基于不完全契约理论的一般均衡分析

通过构建不完全契约理论下的一般均衡模型,对比分析了PPP模式中的融资约束和融资激励对公共产品提供效率和社会福利的影响,并探讨了融资约束条件下的效率损失。结果显示:私人融资的专业性可以提高公共产品合意程度,但是私人部门的融资约束会抵消其专业性带来的好处,导致社会福利损失。最后针对民营企业参与PPP项目对政府提出建议:必须打破融资约束和制度歧视,完善和规范金融市场,在公平、竞争的市场环境下引入专业机构参与公共产品提供的各个领域。     

基于农户视角的农村公共品供需均衡研究

基于3省245个农户的调查表明,农民当前最急需的公共品是卫生医疗、农田基础设施;农民的公共品需求有如下特点：硬品优先于软品;物质需求优先于精神需求;现实优于长远;切身利益重于宏观环境。合意的公共品供给有新型农村合作医疗、粮食直补政策和义务教育,农民对公共品供给最不满意的是农村社会养老、农业科技信息服务和农村金融。农民对公共品供给的满意度主要取决于公共品的规模、质量、价格和农户的人口社会学背景。最后,对农村公共品供需均衡矩阵进行了分析,并建议根据公共品供需衔接状况、农民对公共品供给的满意程度,实行不同的公共品供给策略。     

Migration, Jobs and Welfare: A General Equilibrium Analysis

Immigration has been an important element of the economic development of many countries, although in recent years there has been an intensification of doubts about the benefits of further immigration. This paper brings some simple general‐equilibrium modelling tools to bear on the question of the employment and welfare effects of immigration. Employment and taxation effects, rather than wage and distributional effects, are found to be crucial in determining the impact of immigration on the welfare of factor‐owners in the receiving country. These employment effects depend on the type of immigration and the substitutability or complementarity relationships between immigrant labour and unemployed labour. Certain types of immigration are shown to be Pareto‐improving for the receiving country, without any need for lump‐sum transfers. Simple numerical simulations illustrate the results.     

Taxation, Bequests, and Short and Long Run Timber Supplies: An Overlapping Generations Problem

This paper uses an overlapping generations model with one-sided altruism to study the effects of several forest taxes that target bequests and affect timber supply. Unlike previous work, we investigate bequests and timber supply in both the short and long run when bequests are costly (e.g., taxed). The landowner's problem is examined in the short run, while the government's problem is examined in the long run assuming the existence of a steady state. We also consider taxes targeting harvests, growth, savings and bequests. Several new results are established concerning the interactions of taxes that might be used by a government to alter short and long run forest capital stocks: (i) the presence of a forest bequest tax affects the neutrality of harvest tax in both the short and long run, (ii) in the long run the bequest tax decreases bequests and timber supplies. When the bequest tax is not present, the capital income tax is neutral with respect to bequest and timber supply, while the harvest tax is neutral only if forest productivity is also not taxed. Finally, (iii) in the short run, the substitution and total effects of taxes in landowner decisions generally depend on the presence of the bequest tax. The results have implications for Pigouvian tax design and second best tax choice.     

Tax Policy and Human Capital Formation with Public Investment in Education

This paper studies the effects of distortionary taxes and public investment in an endogenous growth OLG model with knowledge transmission. Fiscal policy affects growth in two respects: first, work time reacts to variations of prospective tax rates and modifies knowledge formation; second, public spending enhances labour efficiency but also stimulates physical capital through increased savings. It is shown that Ramsey-optimal policies reduce savings due to high tax rates on young generations, and are not necessarily growth-improving with respect to a pure private system. Non-Ramsey policies that shift the burden on adults are always growth-improving due to crowding-in effects: the welfare of all generations is unambiguously higher with respect to a private system, and there generally exists a continuum of non-optimal tax rates under which long-run growth and welfare are higher than with the Ramsey-optimal policy.     

Voluntary Export Restraints and Economic Welfare: A General Equilibrium Analysis

We derive some sufficient conditions for the Suzumura-Ishikawa proposition on voluntary export restraints to hold when their model is extended to a general equilibrium framework. The sufficient conditions are concerned with the magnitude of income effects which play no role in the partial-equilibrium analysis of Suzumura and Ishikawa.