The Comparison of ad Valorem and Specific Taxation under Uncertainty

The comparison between specific (per unit) and ad valorem (percentage) taxation has been one of the oldest issues in public finance. In Cournot markets, with deterministic costs structures, conventional wisdom has it that ad valorem taxation tax‐revenue dominates specific. It is shown that in the presence of uncertainty, regarding firms’ cost structures, and under reasonable conditions, the conventional wisdom might not hold. The implication of this, from a policy perspective, is that the precise evaluation of the two types of taxation requires an explicit consideration of cost uncertainty.     

Public Goods and Tax Competition in a Two‐Sided Market

A rather neglected issue in the tax competition literature is the dependence of equilibrium outcomes on the presence of firms and shoppers (two‐sided markets). Making use of a model of vertical and horizontal differentiation, within which jurisdictions compete by providing public goods and levying taxes in order to attract firms and shoppers, this paper characterizes the noncooperative equilibrium. It also evaluates the welfare implications for the jurisdictions of a popular policy of tax coordination: The imposition of a minimum tax. It is shown that the interaction of the two markets affects the intensity of tax competition and the degree of optimal vertical differentiation chosen by the competing jurisdictions. Though the noncooperative equilibrium is, as it is typically the case, inefficient such inefficiency is mitigated by the strength of the interaction in the two markets. A minimum tax policy is shown to be effective when the strength of the interaction is weak and ineffective when it is strong.     

Political Uncertainty and Policy Innovation

Conventional wisdom has it that outside sources of information enhance the capability of political institutions to separate selfish from benevolent incumbents. This paper investigates, in the presence of innovative public policies whose outcomes are uncertain, the role of outside information and shows that it is more involved than typically thought. While it is true that enhanced information helps in separating politicians, it also creates an externality that reduces the incentives to experiment with innovative public policies.