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The purpose of this article is to integrate the class of preferences developed by Gul and Pesendorfer into the theory of optimal redistributive taxation with heterogenous consumers and asymmetric information. The consumers are inclined to over-spend on a commodity for which they experience temptation (TP good). Resisting that temptation gives rise to a utility cost. This cost provides two novel motives for influencing the consumption and labor supply choices; improving the welfare (by reducing the utility cost of exercising self-control) and providing the government with a novel channel via which tax policy can be used to relax a binding self-selection constraint. The welfare motive implies a positive tax on the TP good, as well as a positive (negative) marginal labor income tax rate if the consumer's marginal valuation of leisure exceeds (falls short of) the marginal valuation of leisure that arises if the consumer would succumb to the temptation. We use iso-elastic and logarithmic utility functional form specifications to exemplify when the self-selection channel may lead to higher/lower commodity and marginal labor income taxes.

AbstractA government sets the level of taxation to provide a public good valued by consumers. There are two groups of consumers, the rich and the poor. The government has redistributive preferences, but is initially constrained to use lump‐sum taxation. This potentially leads the government to provide a very low level of the public good out of concern for not reducing private good consumption of the poor. In this context, allowing a small amount of redistribution from the rich to the poor may be Pareto improving. The loss in private consumption by the rich may be more than offset by the added utility from increased public good provision. I also analyze the extent to which a flat income tax can induce the government to choose a level of public good consistent with the Samuelson condition. When consumers have a survival constraint on private consumption, a progressive tax code is required to induce the government to choose the efficient level of the public good. Generally speaking, there is a trade‐off between a desire to restrain the government's ability to redistribute income and a desire to induce it to choose the level of the public good implied by the Samuelson condition.

Education decisions determine a great part of future income. This paper argues that if education is financed by parents' current income a lump-sum tax reduces inequality if all parents have strict investment incentives. However, if some parents are indifferent there is a possible decrease in the wage gap via a contrary indirect tax effect which drops the returns of schooling. Under strict incentives social mobility is not affected, but it increases if skilled parents have weak incentives and decreases if unskilled parents are indifferent in their investment decision.

Abstract This paper studies the impact of redistributive income taxation in a society where only some individuals are motivated by relative consumption concerns. Introducing this heterogeneity raises theoretical challenges since (i) earned income becomes an imperfect indicator of underlying ability and (ii) relative concerns may be inadmissable in the social objective. A new behavioural model is developed in which only relatively‐concerned individuals choose work effort strategically. Linear tax/transfer systems schemes are then characterized and simulated for a series of welfarist and non‐welfarist social objectives, and for different degrees of preference heterogeneity. A key result is that a government which understands the extent of relative consumption concerns–but places no social weight on individuals with such preferences–nevertheless sets a significantly more progressive tax system than a government which ignores relative consumption motivations altogether.

Theories of political redistribution are tested using data collected in three phases of the International Social Survey Programme. Individuals categorized as having high, middle, or low incomes were asked whether they consider the overall tax burden in their countries too high, too low or about right. Very few citizens indicated that they were satisfied with tax systems; most believed that taxes on low & middle incomes are too high, while taxes on high incomes are too low. Support for tax systems is bimodal within the income classes, with the richest 5% being the most supportive, & the median in a population being second. Ideological values have a strong impact on political support for redistribution across all income classes. The results bear witness to the multidimensional nature of preferences for redistribution, & to the delicate question of the effectiveness of democracy in implementing citizens' preferences. [Copyright 2005 Elsevier B.V.]

Increased activity of multinational firms exposes national corporate tax bases to cross-country profit shifting, but also leads to rising profitability of the corporate sector. We incorporate these two effects of economic integration into a simple political economy model where the median voter decides on a redistributive income tax rate. In this setting economic integration may raise or lower the equilibrium tax rate, and it is more likely to raise the tax rate of a low-tax country. The implications of the model are consistent with the empirical observations that effective corporate tax rates have not fallen in all OECD countries, and that corporate tax revenues have generally risen. [Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V.]

I study a credit market with adverse selection as a signalling game. I show that in the least-costly separating equilibrium, entrepreneurs of high-quality projects may over-or under-invest compared to the social optimum to signal their type. I then examine a simple budget-balanced tax-subsidy scheme applied by the government. At a first sight, the tax-subsidy scheme seems to benefit entrepreneurs of low-quality projects and harm entrepreneurs of high-quality projects because the former are cross-subsidised by the latter. Nonetheless, this result does not necessarily hold if entrepreneurs can pledge the subsidy as collateral. In that case, taxes can improve social welfare by either decreasing or increasing aggregate investment depending on whether entrepreneurs of high-quality projects over-or under-invest in equilibrium.