regressive sin taxes with an application to the optimal soda tax a common objection to sin taxes corrective taxes on goods that are thought to be overconsumed such as cigarettes alcohol and sugary drinks is that they often fall disproportionately on low income consumers this paper studies the interaction between corrective and redistributive motives in a general optimal taxation framework and delivers empirically implementable formulas for sufficient statistics for the optimal commodity tax the optimal sin tax is increasing in the price elasticity of demand increasing in the degree to which lower income consumers are more biased or more elastic to the tax decreasing in the extent to which consumption is concentrated among the poor and decreasing in income effects because income effects imply that commodity taxes create labor supply distortions contrary to common intuitions stronger preferences for redistribution can increase the optimal sin tax if lower income consumers are more responsive to taxes or are more biased as an application we estimate the optimal nationwide tax on sugar sweetened beverages using nielsen homescan data and a specially designed survey measuring nutrition knowledge and self control holding federal income tax rates constant our estimates imply an optimal federal sugar sweetened beverage tax of 1 to 2 1 cents per ounce although optimal city level taxes could be as much as 60 lower due to cross border shopping

central bank intervention and risk in the forward market abstract a two country inter temporal asset pricing model is developed which implies that central bank foreign exchange intervention affects the forward exchange risk premium the model is estimated from daily foreign exchange intervention data for the us german and japanese central banks considerable empirical support is found for the theoretical model with intervention influencing the risk premium in the forward market purchases of dollars by the federal reserve bank are found to be associated with excess denominated returns there is evidence that intervention has increased rather than reduced exchange rate volatility

on the undesirability of commodity taxation even when income taxation is not optimal abstract an important result due to atkinson and stiglitz 1976 atkinson a b stiglitz j e 1976 the design of tax structure direct versus indirect taxation journal of public economics 6 55 75 is that differential commodity taxation is not optimal in the presence of an optimal nonlinear income tax given weak separability of utility between labor and all consumption goods this article demonstrates that this conclusion holds regardless of whether the income tax is optimal in particular given any commodity tax and income tax system differential commodity taxation can be eliminated in a manner that results in a pareto improvement also differential commodity taxation can be proportionally reduced so as to generate a pareto improvement in addition for commodity tax reforms that neither eliminate nor proportionally reduce differential taxation a simple efficiency condition is offered for determining whether a pareto improvement is possible

political instability corruption and policy formation the case of environmental policy abstract this paper develops a theory of environmental policy formation taking into consideration the degree of corruptibility and political turbulence the predictions that emerge are that the interaction between the two variables is important political instability has a negative effect on the stringency of environmental regulations if the level of corruption is low but a positive effect when the degree of corruption is high corruption reduces the stringency of environmental regulations but the effect disappears as political instability increases the empirical findings are fully consistent with the predictions of the model

pigou meets mirrlees on the irrelevance of tax distortions for the second best pigouvian tax this paper extends the mirrlees 1971 model of optimal income redistribution with optimal corrective taxes to internalize consumption externalities using general utility structures and exploring both linear and non linear taxes it is demonstrated that the optimal second best tax on an externality generating good should not be corrected for the marginal cost of public funds since it equals one in the optimal tax system in the optimum distortions of income taxes are equal to marginal redistributional gains if the government does not have access to a non distortionary marginal source of finance the marginal cost of public funds can be either larger or smaller than one depending on subjective preferences for income redistribution the optimal second best corrective tax is then either higher or lower than the pigouvian level the findings in this paper generalize and amend prior results based on representative agent models shedding new light on the weak double dividend hypothesis and on the welfare gains of recycling revenue from environmental taxes

environmental governance in federal systems the effects of capital competition and lobby groups noel gaston we argue that centralized and decentralized environmental governance yield equivalent environmental regulations we model worker environmental and capital owner lobby groups that seek influence by offering political contributions worker lobbying in the decentralized case has an effect on environmental regulations identical to that of capital owner lobbying in the centralized case this is because the aggregate effects of environmental regulations on income are equivalent under the two institutional designs whereas workers carry the full burden in the decentralized case when capital competition occurs the burden is shared with the capital owners in the centralized case we present evidence consistent with our theory jel q28 f21 r38 d72 d78 i introduction as the demand for efficient environmental policies increases the ambit of political power in a federation must be determined cumberland 1981 suggests that uniform federal rules avoid the economic competition between jurisdictions in order to attract investment that may result in an excessively low environmental quality as discussed by burtraw and portney 1991 central decision making may be highly inefficient however because federal regulations fail to take into account the heterogeneity of local environments 1 this article develops a theory of decentralized and centralized environmental policy making in federal systems that incorporates the political forces determining the outcomes under the two alternative regulatory designs the empirical evidence on the effects of interjurisdictional capital competition on environmental policies is inconclusive and mainly anecdotal esty 1996 gives an overview of the available evidence and finds that rent seeking behavior undoubtedly affects national as well as state environmental policy making but there is no evidence that public decision making is systematically more distorted at the federal level than at state and local levels 2 in a study of packaging waste regulation in the european union eu paul 1994 95 describes how the move from decentralized to centralized regulation remains controversial some greens bitterly criticize the directive as a sellout to industry it is true that industry aggressively lobbied parliament to stop the efforts of the greens to tighten the directive and that i t is tempting to describe this debate as one more example in which the regulatory authority was captured by industry 3 evidently the move to centralized regulation stimulated industry lobbying the present paper provides an explanation for why industry lobbying may be stronger at the federal level and discusses the implications for environmental policy under decentralized and centralized environmental policy making 4 the current literature lacks a formal comparison of politically determined environmental regulations under the different institutional arrangements that may exist in federal systems 5 while we couch our argument in terms of environmental policy making that could be undertaken either at the national level or at lower levels in a federal structure we believe that the central ideas extend to regulatory policy carried out at both the highest and lowest levels of multi country federations such as the eu 6 extensions of our theory may apply more generally to several forms of regulation for example worker safety standards and product liability legislation as well as to firm taxation a key concern of environmental policy makers in federal systems is interjurisdictional capital mobility we model a decentralized system of regulation with a mobile capital stock consideration of the effects of environmental regulations on capital is important van beers and van den bergh 1997 find no significant negative effect of environmental regulation on export flows in polluting industries except when restricting their data to sectors with high capital mobility

the kyoto protocol a review and perspectives international concern about climate change has led to the kyoto protocol negotiated in 1997 which contains legally binding emission targets for industrialized countries to be achieved during the commitment period 2008 2012 while proponents of the protocol celebrate it as a breakthrough in international climate policy opponents criticize that its approach namely setting targets and timetables for emission reductions is seriously flawed this paper provides a critical assessment of the protocols potential performance and discusses amendments to foster its effectiveness and efficiency it concludes that even without any effective emission reductions in the initial commitment period the ratification of kyoto is important for the further policy process of climate protection the kyoto protocol has established a flexible broad based international mechanism that provides a valuable starting point for shaping efficient climate policies in the future

a tale of two collectives sulphur versus nitrogen oxides emission reduction in europe a theoretical model of emission reductions is specified that accounts for voluntary and non voluntary behaviour regarding the adherence to the helsinki and sofia protocols which mandated emission reductions for sulphur s and nitrogen oxides nox respectively from this model we derive an econometric specification for the demand for emission reductions that adjusts for the spatial dispersion of the pollutant when tested for 25 european nations the model performs well for sulphur cutbacks less satisfying results are obtained for nox because the model s assumption of a unitary actor at the national level is less descriptive collective action considerations indicate that sulphur emissions are easier to control than those of nox

on the desirability of taxing capital income in optimal social insurance abstract this paper analyzes optimal linear taxes on labor income and savings in a two period life cycle model with ex ante identical households endogenous leisure demands in both periods and general processes of skill shocks over the life cycle we demonstrate that the atkinson stiglitz theorem breaks down under risk capital taxes are employed besides labor income taxes for two distinct reasons i capital taxes reduce labor supply distortions on second period labor supply since second period labor supply and saving are substitutes ii capital taxes insure first period income risk although this benefit is partially off set because first period labor supply and saving are complements our results imply that retirement saving should not be actuarially fair

democratic institutions versus autocratic regimes the case of environmental policy the literature suggests that democracy positively affects environmental policy stringency using the method of propensity score matching we find that this result appears to be largely driven by the parliamentary democracies as opposed to the presidential congressional proportional or majority systems moreover it appears that presidential congressional systems often set environmental policies not significantly different from autocracies these are novel contributions to the literature

cooperation in international environmental negotiations due to a preference for equity this paper demonstrates that cooperation in international environmental negotiations can be explained by preferences for equity within a n country prisoner s dilemma in which agents can either cooperate or defect in addition to the standard non cooperative equilibrium cooperation of a large fraction or even of all countries can establish a nash equilibrium in an emission game however where countries can choose their abatement level continuously equity preferences cannot improve upon the standard inefficient nash equilibrium finally in a two stage game on coalition formation the presence of equity interested countries increases the coalition size and leads to efficiency gains here even a stable agreement with full cooperation can be reached

financing the provision of global public goods this paper examines the concept of global public goods gpgs and in that context explores the extent of aid oda presently being diverted to gpg provision and whether such diversion skews aid flows towards some recipients and whether diverting aid to gpg provision crowds out aid for conventional development activities these are examined on the basis of oecd data for the late 1990s the main argument of this paper is that oda should not be used for financing gpg provision by developing countries instead it is suggested that other sources of financing the provision of gpgs should be developed keeping in view the various technologies by which the gpgs can be produced and design principles for supra national institutions various arguments from sandler barrett and kanbur are considered in particular kanbur s suggestion of two tensions involving the principles of economies of scale subsidiarity economies of scope and specialization is explored further some examples of issues where a gpg is produced as a joint product of actions by national governments are considered by looking at data on eight different indicators for 1995 problems in using the joint product approach to gpg provision are also discussed

using elasticities to derive optimal income tax rates this paper derives optimal income tax formulas using compensated and uncompensated elasticities of earnings with respect to tax rates a simple formula for the high income optimal tax rate is obtained as a function of these elasticities and the thickness of the top tail of the income distribution in the general non linear income tax problem this method using elasticities shows precisely how the different economic effects come into play and which are the key relevant parameters in the optimal income tax formulas of mirrlees the optimal non linear tax rate formulas are expressed in terms of elasticities and the shape of the income distribution these formulas are implemented numerically using empirical earning distributions and a range of realistic elasticity parameters

olson s exploitation hypothesis in a public good economy a reconsideration since the publication of olson s 1965 the logic of collective action the exploitation hypothesis in which the rich shoulder the provision burden of public goods for the poor has held sway despite empirical exceptions to address such exceptions we establish two alternative exploitation hypotheses based on contributors asymmetric preferences or on their productivity differences regarding the public good the classic hypothesis and its two variants are proven in a novel fashion for asymmetric preferences we also establish the exploitation hypothesis for the joint products model with private and public co benefits our theoretical insights are then illustrated by some empirical examples from the field of international public goods such as military defense and cross border pollution

should central bankers talk to the foreign exchange markets in this paper we study the role of official statements and speeches given by central bank authorities in charge of foreign exchange policy we investigate the impact of statements that comment on and confirm such interventions on the day of the intervention on the two major foreign exchange markets over an extended period 1989 2003 we also study the impact in terms of policy effectiveness of central bank communication before the actual operations our results suggest that appropriate speeches clarifying the current intervention policy can have marginally virtuous effects both in terms of exchange rate level and exchange rate volatility this leads us to conclude that in general actual interventions on the market should still be employed provided that official statements are used to clarify the nature and purpose of these interventions c 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

environmentalism democracy and pollution control this paper makes two empirical contributions to the literature based on predictions generated by a lobby group model first we investigate how environmental lobby groups affect the determination of environmental policy in rich and developing countries second we explore the interaction between democratic participation and political electoral competition the empirical findings suggest that environmental lobby groups tend to positively affect the stringency of environmental policy moreover political competition tends to raise policy stringency in particular where citizens participation in the democratic process is widespread

national institutions and global public goods are democracies more cooperative in climate change policy this article examines whether democracies contribute more to the pro vision of global public goods it thus contributes to the debate on the effects of domes tic institutions on international cooperation the focus is on human induced climate change in stern s words the biggest market failure the world has ever seen 1 using new data on climate change cooperation we study a cross section of 185 countries in 1990 2004 the results show that the effect of democracy on levels of political com mitment to climate change mitigation policy output is positive in contrast the effect on policy outcomes measured in terms of emission levels and trends is ambiguous these results demonstrate that up until now the democracy effect has not been able to override countervailing forces that emanate from the free rider problem discounting of future benefits of climate change mitigation and other factors that cut against efforts to reduce emissions even though democracies have had a slow start in moving from political and legal commitments policy output to emission reductions policy out comes particularly in the transportation sector we observe some encouraging signs the main implication of our findings for research on international politics is that greater efforts should be made to study policy output and outcome side by side this will help in identifying whether more democratic countries experience larger words deeds gaps also in other policy areas and whether there are systematic differences of this kind between domestic and international commitments and across different policy areas

economics of alliances the lessons for collective action this essay provides an up to date summary of the findings of the literature on the economics of alliances we show that the study of the economics of alliances has played a pivotal role in understanding and applying public good analysis to real world applications we establish that the manner in which alliances address burden sharing and allocative issues is related to strategic doctrines weapon technology perceived threats and membership composition past contributions are evaluated and areas needing further development are identified the theoretical and empirical knowledge gained from the study of alliances is shown to be directly applicable to a wide range of international collectives

the voluntary provision of a pure public good the case of reduced cfc emissions and the montreal protocol abstract this paper applies the theory of the voluntary provision of a pure public good to the behavior of nations to curb chlorofluorocarbon cfc emissions during the late 1980s by devising an empirical test we determine that these cutbacks in emissions are consistent with nash behavior when taste parameters are controlled the relationship between emission cutbacks and national income is nearly linear as implied by the theory if the sample is purged of potential outliers then the linear relationship results a significant taste parameter is the extent of political and civil freedoms while a marginally significant parameter is geophysical position in terms of latitude

indirect taxation is superfluous under separability and taste homogeneity a simple proof indirect taxation is of no use when nonlinear income taxation is available in an economy where everyone has the same taste for goods an elementary proof of this result due to atkinson and stiglitz atkinson a stiglitz j 1976 the design of tax structure direct versus indirect taxation journal of public economics 6 55 75 is provided

identifying the efficacy of central bank interventions evidence from australia and japan abstract using a model incorporating the endogenous relationship between exchange rates and intervention we show how a change in central bank policy can be used as an identification assumption estimating this model with simulated gmm for daily data from australia and japan we find that a us 100 million purchase appreciates the australian dollar by 1 3 1 8 but the yen by just 0 2 almost all of the impact of an intervention occurs during the day it is conducted and we confirm that central banks typically lean against the wind

identifying the free riders a simple algorithm for determining who will contribute to a public good abstract when a heterogeneous group of people provide themselves with a pure public good the resulting nash equilibrium outcome will divide the group into contributors and free riders this paper proposes a general algorithm for discovering which individuals in the group fall into which of these two classes the algorithm is based on identifying for each individual how much of the public good must be provided by others to drive that individual s contribution to zero

which commodity taxes should supplement the income tax the analysis takes as its point of departure a continuum of consumers economy in which an optimum income tax exists and is the only tax instrument in operation the welfare effects of introducing small excise taxes to supplement the income tax are then explored essential in this context are changes in the tax distortions of work incentives it is shown that a commodity should be taxed or subsidized depending on whether it is positively or negatively related to leisure in a sense which is precisely defined the results are related to earlier contributions to the literature on direct versus indirect taxation the history of debates on the proper roles of direct and indirect taxation goes back at least to the days of gladstone as well described by atkinson 1977 the prevailing political opinion of the balance between the two types of taxes has varied over time at present the swing in a number of european countries seems to be in favour of reforms towards tax systems which rely more heavily on indirect taxation and less on income taxation in view of this long economic political record it is not surprising that the choice between income tax and commodity taxes has also become an important subject in tax theory an early contribution to the understanding of this issue was corlett and hague 1953 54 their main model considers a three good economy containing leisure and two taxed commodities there is only one consumer or a population of identical consumers labour is the only source of income producer prices are fixed the government s revenue requirement is given the starting point of the analysis is a situation in which the two commodities are taxed at uniform rates the question which is analyzed is then how the government can raise welfare by slightly differentiating the tax rates the answer which is derived is that the consumer good which is the stronger substitute for labour complement with leisure should be taxed at

estimating the effects of kyoto on bilateral trade flows using matching econometrics many kyoto countries fear a loss of competitiveness due to unilateral climate policy efforts policymakers therefore call for carbon related border tax adjustments with this paper we attempt to estimate the treatment effect of kyoto commitment on bilateral export flows using regression adjusted differences in differences matching techniques the gravity and international environmental agreement formation literatures provide guidelines for the choice of matching variables we find that kyoto countries exports are reduced by 13 to 14 per cent due to kyoto commitment trade effects are largest in energy intensive homogeneous industries such as iron and steel non ferrous metals organic and inorganic chemicals but also in machinery and equipment

capital taxation quantitative explorations of the inverse euler equation economies with private information provide a rationale for capital taxation in this paper we ask what the welfare gains from following this prescription are we develop a method to answer this question in standard general equilibrium models with idiosyncratic uncertainty and incomplete markets we find that general equilibrium forces are important and greatly reduce the welfare gains once these effects are taken into account the gains are relatively small in our benchmark calibration these results do not imply that dynamic aspects of social insurance design are unimportant but they do suggest that capital taxation may play a modest role

do voluntary international environmental agreements work abstract we consider the effects of international environmental agreements using the 1988 sofia protocol on the reduction of nitrogen oxides panel data on 23 european countries for the period 1985 96 is used to evaluate the impact on emissions by dividing countries into participants and non participants that is those that did and those that did not ratify the sofia protocol using a difference in difference estimator and controlling for country specific variables we find that signing the treaty had a significant positive impact on emission reduction the estimated yearly reduction in emissions is approximately 2 1 greater than it would have been without the sofia protocol

on the optimal income taxation some further numerical results abstract using numerical calculations we show in the optimal income tax model that a realistic value for the elasticity of substitution between consumption and leisure 0 5 leads to conclusions different from some of those drawn by mirrlees 1971 and atkinson 1973 the marginal tax rates are not so low and the shape of the tax schedule is for a great majority of the population substantially nonlinear a new feature in our calculations is that both results come out without going to maximin as done by atkinson 1973 we study in special cases the locality of the zero limit of the marginal tax rate at the upper end of the ability distribution and we achieve a very definite conclusion this result is really very local we also present an interesting approximation result concerning the relationship between the level of the government revenue and the marginal tax rate for individuals with high ability an important methodological remark analogous to sen s critique on the ethical measures of inequality is made on the interpretation of optimal income tax calculations

public provision commodity demand and hours of work an empirical analysis the theoretical analysis of optimal commodity taxation is advanced but there is only limited empirical evidence to guide commodity tax policies with this paper we contribute to this body of literature by empirically examining using finnish consumption data the relation between working hours consumption demand and the use of publicly provided day care when labour income is controlled for in a non parametric way we find that capital income and housing expenses are negatively associated with working hours whereas the use of childcare is positively correlated with working hours these results provide arguments for taxing capital income and housing and for subsidizing day care

kyoto protocol cooperation does government corruption facilitate environmental lobbying does environmental lobbying affect the probability of environmental treaty ratification does the level of government corruption play a role for the success of such lobbying in this paper we propose that a more corruptible government may be more responsive to the demands of the environmental lobby we use several stratified hazard models and panel data from 170 countries on the timing of kyoto protocol ratification to test this hypothesis we find that increased environmental lobby group activity raises the probability of ratification and the effect rises with the degree of corruption

strategies of exchange rate policy in g3 economies abstract the paper argues that communication has become the primary policy tool for g3 monetary authorities to influence exchange rates it analyses the strategies policy makers pursue through communication and actual interventions with regard to exchange rate trends monetary policy and coordinated interventions

the tragedy of the commons in international fisheries an empirical examination abstract historically all capture fisheries have proven hard to manage internationally shared stocks face an additional impediment to effective management previous fisheries studies estimate gains from cooperation for particular species or locations but evidence is lacking on the wider effect that international sharing has in relation to other variables that affect stock status this paper is an attempt to shed a broader light on the effect of sharing by identifying whether shared fish stocks are systematically more exploited i compile exploitation status biological and economic data into a unique two period panel of more than 200 fish stocks from around the globe with which i test the theoretical implications of sharing the empirical results from ordered category estimation suggest that shared stocks are indeed more prone to overexploitation

strategic risk taking when there is a public good to be provided privately abstract we describe a situation where a risk averse individual has a preference for risk taking in the literature we find this strategic risk behaviour in an altruistic framework where the individual actually benefits from his noninsurance only in the loss outcome in our model all agents are perfectly selfish when a public good is to be provided privately after the insurance decision the player facing greater uncertainty can expect an income transfer from the other individuals through the commitments to the public good this ex ante income transfer is not conditional on the loss

optimal central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market abstract we consider a currency with exchange rate dynamics modeled as a geometric brownian motion the objective of the central bank is to keep this exchange rate as close as possible to a given target so there is a running cost associated to the difference between the exchange rate and the target additionally there are also fixed and proportional costs associated with each intervention the objective of this paper is to find the optimal level of intervention and the optimal sizes of the interventions so as to minimize the total cost we solve this problem by applying the theory of stochastic impulse controls journal of economic literature classification numbers c61 d81 f31 g15

central bank communication and monetary policy a survey of theory and evidence over the last two decades communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy these real world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication mostly empirical and almost all of it written in this decade we survey this ever growing literature the evidence suggests that communication can be an important and powerful part of the central bank s toolkit since it has the ability to move financial markets to enhance the predictability of monetary policy decisions and potentially to help achieve central banks macroeconomic objectives however the large variation in communication strategies across central banks suggests that a consensus has yet to emerge on what constitutes an optimal communication strategy

strategic interaction among governments in the provision of a global public good abstract how do governments respond to other governments when providing a global public good using data from 2007 to 2014 on medical research funding for infectious and parasitic diseases we examine how governments and foundations in 41 countries respond to funding changes by the us government which accounts for half of funding for these diseases because funding across governments might be positively correlated due to unobserved drivers they have in common we use variation in the representation of research intensive universities on us congressional appropriations committees as an instrument for us funding we find that a 10 increase in us government funding for a disease is associated with a 2 to 3 reduction in funding for that disease by another government in the following year

inter regional competition comparative advantage and environmental federalism in this paper we compare endogenous environmental policy setting with centralized and decentralized governments when regions have comparative advantages in different polluting goods we develop a two region two good model with inter regional environmental damages and perfect competition in product markets where both regions produce both goods despite positive spillovers of pollution across regions the model predicts that decentralization may lead to weaker or stricter environmental standards or taxes depending on the degree of regional comparative advantage and the extent of transboundary pollution this suggests that federalism can lead to either a race to the bottom or a race to the top without relying on inefficient lobbying efforts or capital competition resume concurrence inter regionale avantage comparatif et federalisme environnemental dans ce texte les auteurs comparent l appareil de definition de politique environnementale endogene pour des gouvernements centralises et decentralises quand les regions ont des avantages comparatifs dans la production de divers biens polluants on developpe un modele a deux regions et a deux biens operant dans un cadre ou existent 1 des effets de retombees inter regionales toxiques pour l environnement 2 concurrence parfaite dans les marches des produits et 3 ou les deux regions produisent les deux biens malgre les effets de pollution entre regions le modele predit que la decentralisation peut entrainer des standards et des taxes portant sur l environnement qui sont soit plus faibles ou plus forts selon le degre d avantage comparatif regional et la nature de la pollution transfrontiere on suggere que le federalisme peut conduire a une emulation soit vers le bas soit vers le haut sans avoir a avoir recours a des efforts de lobbying inefficaces ou a la concurrence pour le capital pour expliquer le resultat

international spillovers and water quality in rivers do countries free ride transboundary spillovers may degrade environmental quality if countries free ride this paper examines the extent of such degradation in water quality in international rivers using data from river monitoring stations in the un s global emissions monitoring system gems it compares pollution levels in international and domestic rivers the results suggest that free riding may substantially increase pollution in international rivers but the estimates are sensitive to the inclusion of country effects this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

talking heads the effects of ecb statements on the euro dollar exchange rate abstract this paper studies the reaction of the conditional mean and volatility of the euro dollar exchange rate to statements by european central bank and national central bank officials we focus on comments on monetary policy and the external value of the euro we find that the bundesbank has dominated the news coverage we conclude that ecb statements have mainly influenced conditional volatility in some cases there are effects of statements on the conditional mean of the euro dollar exchange rate efforts to talk up the euro have generally not been successful there is also evidence of asymmetric reactions to news

on the taxation of durable goods this paper proposes a mirrleesian theory of commodity taxation in the presence of durable goods nondurable goods should be taxed uniformly provided that the preferences over nondurable consumption are weakly separable from labor effort a uniform taxation across all goods is optimal if the utility from durable consumption is linear and the preferences are additively separable between durable goods nondurable goods and labor effort if those conditions are not met wealth effects and substitution effects justify the use of differential commodity taxes to characterize the sign of the tax differential the paper exploits a substitution euler equation that links the marginal rate of substitution between durable and nondurable consumption across time finally an application of this theory suggests that housing investment should face higher tax rates than nondurable consumption

production of chlorofluorocarbons in anticipation of the montreal protocol anticipation of an international environmental agreement provides an incentive for countries to change their production behavior prior to negotiations in order to gain a favorable bargaining position increased historical production figures at the time of negotiations may influence the magnitude of the baseline from which cutbacks will be specified in this paper we empirically measure the magnitude of

political institutions and pollution control this paper models the selection of environmental policies under authoritarian and democratic regimes and tests the hypothesis that political institutions systematically affect the enactment of environmental regulations the results support the contention that political institutional arrangements rather than resource endowments largely determine policies concerning environmental regulation copyright 1992 by mit press

direct versus indirect taxation the design of the tax structure revisited this article studies the optimal direct indirect tax mix problem when individuals differ in several unobservable characteristics productivity and endowments it presents general expressions for the optimal commodity tax rates and proves that contrary to atkinson and stiglitz s 1976 result differential commodity taxation remains a useful instrument of tax policy even if preferences are separable between labor and produced goods when cross substitution effects are zero the expressions resemble traditional many households ramsey rules in a cobb douglas illustration where endowments differ only in good 1 interpreted as wealth the tax on good 2 provides an indirect way to tax the unobservable wealth

sunk capital and negotiated resolutions of environmental conflicts two nations seek a cooperative agreement to control bilateral flows of an industrial pollutant from previous noncooperative production choices the nations hold a certain amount of sunk capital if production requires relatively large investments in sunk capital the nations may find that they cannot negotiate production quotas that improve on their noncooperative choices when the nations find cooperation worthwhile negotiated levels of production will be higher than in the absence of sunk capital furthermore both nations are motivated to attempt to manipulate the terms of the agreement by making strategic investments in sunk capital prior to its completion

the choice of the personal income tax base abstract starting with vickrey 1945 and mirrlees 1971 the optimal tax literature has studied the design of a personal income tax the assumed ideal would be to tax earnings ability earnings ability is unobservable for tax purposes however past papers have focused instead on designing a tax on labor income existing tax bases though depend on a broader range of information about each individual than just labor income in principle this supplementary information can help in designing a tax that has more attractive distributional properties by more closely approximating an ability tax the objective of this paper is to lay out theoretically and estimate empirically how to make best use of available information about each individual in addition to earnings in a setting where the first best tax would be an ability tax the theory lays out an equity efficiency trade off when choosing the tax base in the empirical work we find the tax base that is best on equity grounds alone we find that the choice to tax couples based on their joint income and the inclusion of dividends interest income and dependents deduction in the tax base in roughly their current form can be rationalized simply based on their value in better approximating an ability tax without any need for supplementary motivations for these provisions however the inclusion of mortgage and property tax payments in the list of itemized deductions cannot be defended on these grounds

international emissions trading with endogenous allowance choices abstract this paper compares endogenous choices of tradable and non tradable emission allowances by non cooperative countries i find that the cost savings of trading do not necessarily lead to less pollution in particular environmentally more concerned countries usually choose less allowances if these are tradable but this may be offset by the choice of more allowances on the side of environmentally less concerned countries moreover if the establishment of a trading system requires the unanimous approval of all countries there may be no agreement on trading even if it were to lead to less pollution overall conversely a trading system may find unanimous approval even if it induces more pollution

informational benefits of international treaties international treaties allow a minister in one country to learn about the beliefs held by a minister in another country so allowing each to make better decisions when the net benefits of environmental policy are uncertain a country which participates in negotiating an environmental treaty or which supports strong environmental action thereby provides information to another country that such action can be worthwhile this dimension of international environmental agreements helps explain why countries negotiate treaties why these treaties often implement the nash non cooperative equilibrium why agreement to a treaty by a country deemed not particularly favorable to it can strengthen environmental action and why treaties may invoke a minimum participation clause the informational mechanism we discuss holds even if physical spillovers are absent and even if monitoring and enforcement are infeasible our approach can explain additional phenomena how requirements for approval by several bodies within a country can increase support for a policy and why simultaneous action can lead to better outcomes than sequential action

addressing global environmental externalities transaction costs considerations is there a way to understand why some global environmental externalities are addressed effectively whereas others are not the transaction costs of defining the property rights to mitigation benefits and costs is a useful framework for such analysis this approach views international cooperation as a contractual process among country leaders to assign those property rights leaders cooperate when it serves domestic interests to do so the demand for property rights comes from those who value and stand to gain from multilateral action property rights are supplied by international agreements that specify resource access and use assign costs and benefits including outlining the size and duration of compensating transfer payments and determining who will pay and who will receive them four factors raise the transaction costs of assigning property rights i scientific uncertainty regarding mitigation benefits and costs ii varying preferences and perceptions across heterogeneous populations iii asymmetric information and iv the extent of compliance and new entry these factors are used to examine the role of transaction costs in the establishment and allocation of property rights to provide globally valued national parks implement the convention on the international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora execute the montreal protocol to manage emissions that damage the stratospheric ozone layer set limits on harvest of highly migratory ocean fish stocks and control greenhouse gas emissions jel d23 p14 q22 q51 q54 q58

the desirability of commodity taxation under non linear income taxation and heterogeneous tastes abstract this paper revisits the atkinson stiglitz result on uselessness of commodity taxation in the presence of optimal non linear income taxation in a more general setup namely when tastes are heterogeneous this general analysis displays the key economic assumptions under which the atkinson stiglitz result is robust a small tax on a given commodity is desirable if high income earners have a relatively higher taste for this commodity or if consumption of this commodity increases with leisure an application to the case of savings suggests that even in the presence of optimal non linear earnings taxation there is a role for a supplemental capital income tax in the standard overlapping generation model

winners and losers in a world with global warming noncooperation altruism and social welfare abstract in this paper global warming is an asymmetric transboundary externality which benefits some countries or regions and harms others we use a simple two country model to analyze the effects of global warming on resource allocations the global warming stock and national and global welfare

strategic delegation of environmental policy making a common claim is that nations should cooperate in environmental policy making however there is little empirical support that noncooperative decision making results in too low environmental standards and taxes we develop a theoretical model and show that if the median voter cares sufficiently for the environment she has an incentive to delegate policy making to a politician that cares more for the environment than she does herself by doing so she mitigates the race to the bottom in environmental taxes in contrast if environmental policies are determined cooperatively with other countries the median voter has an incentive to delegate policy making to a politician that cares less for the environment than she does herself so as to free ride on international environmental agreements

central bank intervention and foreign exchange rates new evidence from figarch estimations abstract in this paper we investigate the effects of official interventions on the short run evolution and volatility of exchange rates to this aim we rely on a new measure of volatility implied by the figarch model that outperforms the traditionally used garch one it is found that central bank interventions exert an incorrectly signed effect on the levels of exchange rates and tend to increase their volatility in the short run in general our results also show that the traditional garch estimations tend to underestimate the effects in terms of volatility

the effects of male and female labor supply on commodity demands we examine the effects of male and female labor supply on household demands and present a simple and robust test for the separability of commodity demands from labor supply using data on individual households from six years of the uk fes we estimate a demand system for seven goods which includes hours and participation dummies as conditioning variables allowance is made for the possible endogeneity of these conditioning labor supply variables we find that separability is rejected furthermore we present evidence that ignoring the effects of labor supply leads to bias in the parameter estimates

the impact of equity preferences on the stability of international environmental agreements this paper uses a coalition formation model to explore how equity considerations affect countries cooperation on global environmental issues e g on climate change when developing countries are exempted from obligations to reduce their emissions i find that opening them for abatement projects financed by industrialized countries changes the incentives to cooperate in a way which can increase emissions and decrease welfare equity concerns in industrialized countries regarding the difference between their per capita emission levels and those of developing countries lead to increased abatement but do not qualitatively change the incentives to cooperate inequality aversion with respect to differences to abatement targets across industrialized countries generally induces larger coalition sizes and stricter abatement here the inclusion of developing countries improves upon the prospects of cooperation

oral interventions versus actual interventions in fx markets an event study approach the article assesses whether exchange rate communication or oral intervention has been an effective policy tool for monetary authorities to influence exchange rates it employs an event study methodology that identifies intervention clusters or events for the euro dollar and the dollar yen exchange rates the article finds that both oral intervention events and actual intervention events have been highly successful over the short to medium run the article shows that the success of intervention events is related to market conditions and to the coordination among policy makers it also finds that the success of communication and actual interventions is largely unrelated to monetary policy thus suggesting that interventions primarily function through a coordination channel

international environmental agreements and strategic voting two anonymous referees have provided very valuable comments and suggestions we have also benefited from discussions at seminars at the universities of bonn dortmund and dresden and at the conferences of euresco the european economic association and the verein fur socialpolitik this paper was partly written while haupt was visiting the economics department at the university of colorado at boulder he is very grateful to the members of the department particularly to eckhard janeba for their hospitality and for stimulating discussions and to the fritz thyssen stiftung for funding his research visit we also thank the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft dfg for financial support

the kyoto protocol empirical evidence of a hidden success abstract how effective was the kyoto protocol international environmental agreements iea have been on the rise over the past four decades however thus far their effectiveness is controversial in view of the conflicting results found in the related literature this paper addresses its effectiveness by utilizing for the first time the generalized synthetic control method gscm to compare the emissions of the industrialized countries with a no kyoto counterfactual scenario that represents the expected emissions in the absence of the protocol this method facilitates a robust comparison between treated and control countries as done by almer and winkler 2017 and account for the multiple treated units as done by grunewald and martinez zarzoso 2016 so as to capture the collective nature of the protocol results show that the protocol was successful in reducing the emissions of the ratifying countries approximately by 7 below the emissions expected under a no kyoto scenario confirming the importance of accounting for the collective nature of the agreement

corruption illegal trade and compliance with the montreal protocol this paper studies the effects of corruption rule of law and tariffs on illegal trade in chlorofluorocarbons cfcs controlled by the montreal protocol since data on illegal trade is not available it is not possible to test any theoretical conclusions about smuggling the paper however attempts to circumvent the problem by developing a model of illegal trade in cfcs that derives predictions about the effects of corruption rule of law and tariffs on both legal and illegal imports of cfcs then the theoretical predictions concerning legal imports are tested using panel data on cfc consumption using the estimates of legal imports inferences about illegal trade are made the basic findings indicate that knowledge about the degree of rule of law corruption and the level of tariffs is needed for the correct interpretation of the data on environmental performance reported to international monitoring agencies

the oslo protocol on sulfur reduction the great leap forward the increasing number of international environmental agreements ieas and the fact that under some agreements emissions have been reduced beyond agreed targets are frequently viewed as success stories of international cooperation we argue that success can only be measured if abatement targets under an iea are compared with estimated abatement levels in the absence of a treaty and are evaluated in terms of costs and benefits we analyze the oslo protocol on sulfur reduction showing that this iea is not the great leap forward when compared with the calculated nash equilibrium and the social optimum however we also demonstrate that under the oslo protocol more ambitious targets could not have been realized due to strong free rider incentives

environmental regulations transfers and trade theory and evidence abstract this paper develops a theory of compensation of producers for the costs associated with environmental regulations we show that the existence of transfers can give counter intuitive effects of environmental policy on both output and trade flows in particular the compensation obtained by producers neutralizes the effect of environmental policy on output and consequently on trade flows this may help explain why previous empirical research has found weak evidence that environmental regulations affect trade patterns the theory is tested using agricultural sector data the evidence supports the hypothesis that environmental regulations and transfers are positively correlated

estimating strategic models of international treaty formation this article develops an empirical framework for analysing the timing of international treaties a treaty is modelled as a dynamic game among governments that decide on participation in every period the net benefit of treaty membership increases over time spillovers among members and non members accelerate or delay treaty formation by transforming participation into a strategic complement or substitute respectively the predictions of the model inform the estimation of the structural parameters based on a cross section of treaty ratification dates with this approach i estimate the sign and magnitude of strategic interaction in the ratification of the montreal protocol in the formation of europe s preferential trade agreements and in the growth of germany s network of bilateral investment treaties through a series of counterfactual experiments i explore different mechanisms that give rise to strategic interaction in the formation of these treaties

optimal tax mix with income tax non compliance abstract although developing countries face high levels of income inequality they rely more on consumption taxes which tend to be linear and are less effective for redistribution than a non linear income tax one explanation for this pattern is that the consumption taxes are generally more enforceable in these economies this paper studies the optimal combination of a linear consumption tax with a non linear income tax for redistributive purposes in our model households might not comply with the income tax code by reporting income levels that differ from their true income however the consumption tax is fully enforceable we derive a formula for the optimal income tax schedule as a function of the consumption tax rate the recoverable elasticities and the moments of the taxable income distribution our equation differs from those of mirrlees 1971 and saez 2001 because households face a consumption tax and they respond to income tax not only through labor supply but also through mis reporting their incomes both aspects are empirically relevant to our calibration of the optimal top rate in the russian economy we then characterize the optimal mix between a linear consumption tax rate and a non linear income tax schedule finally we find that the optimal consumption tax rate is non increasing in the redistributive motives of the social planner

central bank intervention and exchange rate volatility abstract this paper explores the effects of foreign exchange intervention by central banks on the behavior of exchange rates the g 3 central banks have undertaken an unprecedented number of both coordinated and unilateral intervention operations in the last 10 years existing empirical evidence on the effectiveness of intervention is mixed studies using data from the 1970s suggest that intervention operations that do not affect the monetary base have at most a short lived influence on exchange rates but more recent studies indicate that the intervention operations that followed the plaza agreement influenced both the level and variance of exchange rates this paper examines the effects of us german and japanese monetary and intervention policies on dollar mark and dollar yen exchange rate volatility over the 1977 1994 period the results indicate that intervention operations generally increase exchange rate volatility this is particularly true of secret interventions which are those undertaken by central banks without notification of the public overt interventions in the mid 1980s appear to have reduced exchange rate volatility but in other periods and for the 1977 1994 period as a whole central bank intervention is associated with greater exchange rate volatility

redistribution and pollution taxes with non linear engel curves abstract this paper analyses optimal corrective taxation and optimal income redistribution the pigouvian pollution tax is higher if pollution damages disproportionally hurt the poor due to equity weighting of pollution damages moreover under general utility functions optimal pollution taxes should be set below the pigouvian tax if the poor spend a disproportionate fraction of their income on polluting goods however if engel curves are linear optimal pollution taxes should follow the first best rule for the pigouvian corrective tax even if the government wants to redistribute income and the poor spend a disproportional part of their income on polluting goods the often used quasi linear ces and stone geary utility functions all have linear engel curves if engel curves are linear and if pollution taxes are not optimised pareto improving green tax reforms exist that move the pollution tax closer to the pigouvian tax simulations demonstrate that optimal corrective taxes should be pigouvian if the demand for polluting goods is derived from a les demand system but deviate from the pigouvian taxes if demand for polluting goods demand is derived from a piglog demand system

strategic information acquisition and the mitigation of global warming abstract we consider the strategic role of uncertainty and information acquisition for the mitigation of global warming before the countries decide on their contribution to a mitigation of global warming they may invest in information about the country specific benefit of reductions of the emissions of greenhouse gases we show that information acquisition has a substantial strategic value countries may prefer not to learn their benefit of climate protection even if information acquisition does not involve a direct cost this strategic information choice may further decrease the efficiency of the public good provision

why cooperate public goods economic power and the montreal protocol this paper develops a correlated probit model to describe dichotomous choices that may contain a public goods component or some other forms of interdependency the key contribution of the paper is to formulate tests for interdependent behavior among agents in particular we examine the decisions by nations whether or not to ratify the montreal protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer specifically we reject free riding as a motive for not ratifying the protocol and we find little evidence that individual nations were influenced by the behavior of their largest trading partners hence the data suggest that with respect to the montreal protocol most nations acted without regard for the actions of other nations

the participation decision versus the level of participation in an environmental treaty a spatial probit analysis abstract this paper represents treaty participation as a two stage game for which nations first decide whether or not to participate and then they choose their level of participation the resulting subgame perfect equilibrium is used to derive a reduced form equation for estimating and separating the influences of the variables at the two decision stages this spatial probit equation forms the basis for a full information maximum likelihood estimator that accounts for the simultaneity bias associated with public good spillins at both stages when the procedure is applied to the helsinki protocol we find that the strategic influence of a variable may drastically differ depending upon which stage is scrutinized

strategic voting for noncooperative environmental policies in open economies in this paper we construct a political economy model of strategic environmental policymaking with different degrees of product differentiation and different market structures and examine how strategic voting decisions are affected by the choice of environmental policy instruments tax or standard we show that in a cournot market structure voters elect tax setting policymakers who are more green than themselves when product differentiation and or environmental externalities are more prominent in a bertrand market structure they elect more green tax setting policymakers than themselves on the other hand they elect standard setting policymakers who are less green than themselves the results confirm the advantage of the overall use of emission tax over that of emission standard regarding the welfare effect of strategic voting

optimal linear commodity taxation under optimal non linear income taxation abstract this paper analyzes optimal linear commodity taxes joint with non linear income taxes we provide optimal tax rules based on empirically observable elasticities earnings and commodity demands we demonstrate that commodities should be taxed subsidized if conditional on earnings doing so boosts labor supply as the critical role of commodity taxation is to alleviate distortions on labor supply caused by income taxation we extend the standard formula for optimal non linear income taxation for the presence of optimal linear commodity taxes we correct parts of the literature by showing that the optimal second best allocations derived by atkinson and stiglitz 1976 1980 cannot be supported by linear commodity taxes

corruption and air pollution in europe this paper examines how the effectiveness of regulatory framework influences levels of sulphur emissions in a scenario where to reduce its emission tax payments a polluting firm may under report emissions level at the risk of being audited and fined first a model to explain how changes in regulatory framework e g audit effectiveness and transboundary spillovers affect both actual and reported emissions is developed then the theoretical predictions using data for 39 european countries from 1999 to 2003 are tested and inferences about true emission levels are made the empirical analysis supports the theoretical predictions with significant implications for the interpretation of pollution data reported to international monitoring agencies countries with effective regulation are likely to have relatively high reported emissions of sulphur but this should not automatically be interpreted as weak environmental performance because their actual pollution levels are likely to be lower than in nations with less effective regulation

are forign exchange intervention and monetary policy related and does it really matter the relationship between foreign exchange intervention and monetary policy underlies the question of whether sterilized interventions can affect the exchange rate in this article the author examines this relationship using data on u s foreign exchange interventions from 1985 to 1990 recently made publicly available she examines whether interventions could be viewed as signaling changes in future monetary policy variables the author also considers whether changes in monetary policy may induce interventions in an effort by central bankers to lean against the wind of exchange rate movements interestingly she finds evidence both that interventions help predict monetary policy variables and that monetary variables help predict interventions copyright 1995 by university of chicago press

exploring the nature of inter country interactions in the process of ratifying international environmental agreements the case of the kyoto protocol international environmental agreements require negotiation and cooperation among countries this paper attempts to analyze the presence and nature of inter country interactions in the process of ratifying such agreements we develop a theoretical argument based on the notions of strategic substitutability and strategic complementarity and study the interactions among three different peer types geographic neighbors trading partners and green investment projects partners in our case clean development mechanism projects partners we test for the presence of interactions by taking into account a temporal dimension which constitutes a methodological contribution to this end we introduce spatially lagged endogenous variables into a parametric survival model and apply the proposed framework to the kyoto protocol ratification process our data sample covers 164 countries for the period 1998 to 2009 we find evidence that while countries ratification decisions are basically strategic substitutes they become strategic complements once we focus on the ratification decisions of specific peers

event studies in economics and finance the event study is an important research tool in economics and finance the goal of an event study is to measure the effects of an economic event on the value of firms event study methods exploit the fact that given rationality in the marketplace the effects of an event will be reflected immediately in security prices thus the impact can be measured by examining security prices surrounding the event in this paper event study methods are described including some of the potential complications an example is included to illustrate the approach

in praise of inequality public good provision and income distribution abstract it is shown that if all individuals contribute towards the provision of a public good their utilities are equalised even if the income distribution is unequal it may seem that there is then no role for redistributive policy but it is proved that social welfare can be raised by creating sufficient income inequality that only the rich provide public goods

self selection and pareto efficient taxation abstract this paper analyses the set of pareto efficient tax structures the formulation of the problem as one of self selection not only shows more clearly the similarity between this problem and a number of other problems such as the optimal pricing of a monopolist which have recently been the subject of extensive research but also allows the derivation of a number of new results we establish i under fairly weak conditions randomization of tax structures is desirable ii if different individuals are not perfect substitutes for one another in production then the general equilibrium effects until now largely ignored in the literature of changes in the tax structure may be dominant in determining the optimal tax structure in particular if the relative wage of high ability and low ability individuals depends on the relative supplies of labor the optimal tax structure entails a negative marginal tax rate on the high ability individuals and a positive marginal tax rate on the low ability individuals the marnitude of which depends on the elasticity of substitution iii if individuals differ in their preferences pareto efficient taxation may entail negative marginal tax rates for high incomes while iv if wage income is stochastic the marginal tax rate at the upper end may be 100 our analysis thus makes clear that the main qualitative properties of the optimal tax structure to which earlier studies called attention are not robust to these attempts to make the theory more realistic