the dynamic effects of personal and corporate income tax changes in the united states comment abstract mertens and ravn 2013 estimate impulse response functions irfs from income tax changes in a structural vector autoregression svar by using narrative accounts of tax liability changes

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

market access for sale abstract this paper focuses on the links between foreign lobbying and preferential market access granted by the united states government to exporters in the rest of the americas we first develop a simple framework based on grossman and helpman grossman g helpman e 1994 protection for sale american economic review 84 4 833 850 to explain how lobbying by foreign firms affects their preferential access to the united states market we then estimate the model using data on tariff preferences and lobby contributions for the 34 countries in the region empirical results suggest that foreign lobbying is an important force behind preferential market access to the united states the structural estimates indicate that the weight given to foreign lobby contributions in the united states government objective function is five times higher than the weight granted to tariff revenue forgone due to preferences thus our results indicate that market access is up for sale and foreign lobbies are buying it

state level implications of federal tax policies abstract the united states federal fiscal policy has differential impact across states we construct a new quarterly state level dataset that we use to analyze the impact of unexpected changes in federal personal and corporate income taxes we find substantial heterogeneity across states with more than half having no significant response to the tax cuts in addition less capital intensive states have larger responses to corporate tax cuts although puzzling in standard models a model with corporate and non corporate sectors is consistent with this evidence overall our results suggest the importance of variation and reallocation across states in evaluating federal policy

legislative organization and pollution taxation the role of political institutions in shaping public policy has been analyzed in isolation from corruption and legislative organization specifically bicameralism has received minimal attention we analyze pollution taxation when decisions are influenced by several veto players such as legislative chambers our theory predicts that an increase in the number of veto players e g moving from uni to bi cameralism pushes the pollution tax towards the social optimum with the effect being conditional on corruption as such dispersion around the optimal tax is lower under bicameralism empirical tests using data from 86 countries support the theory

the family and the state the immaturity of children sometimes precludes efficient arrangements between children and parents or others responsible for child care the difficulty in establishing efficient relations within families provides the point of departure for our interpretation of the heavy state involvement in the family the authors believe that a surprising number of state interventions mimic the agreements that would occur if children were capable of arranging for their care many regulations of the family improve the efficiency of family activities these interventions include subsidies to education and training social security and other old age support subsidies to births laws that limit access to divorce and the sale of children and laws that require parents permission for early marriage and other choices of children families that leave bequests can force children to repay parents for investments in human capital by reducing bequests therefore these families do not underinvest in childrens human capital by contrast families that do not leave bequests often poorer families do underinvest in children the state may subsidize schools and other training facilities to raise investments in children by poorer families to efficient levels authors modified

the political intergenerational welfare state abstract using a three period overlapping generations economy framework we characterize an intergenerational welfare state with endogenous education and pension under voting we show that although politically establishing pay as you go payg social security in isolation in a dynamically efficient economy will always reduce the capital investment and therefore the social welfare as expected in contrast politically implementing education pension policy package instead can improve both human and physical capital accumulation and social welfare over laissez faire however for this the political influence of the old has to be small thus limiting the size of the payg social security program

aggregate and distributional effects of fair social security abstract in an overlapping generations economy with production endogenous labor supply a bequest motive and uncertain lifetime we show that a fair fully funded social security program reduces the aggregate levels of output employment capital and savings we determine the necessary and sufficient conditions for this social security program to increase the inequality of the income distribution the conclusions apply to the entire non stationary competitive equilibrium path taken by the economy following the introduction of social security

distributional effects of public education in an economy with public pensions we study how the allocation of government expenditures between two major outlays education and pay as you go social security affects human capital distribution in an economy with heterogeneous agents we consider an overlapping generations economy where the government maintains both programs and allocates tax revenues to finance them in our model human capital is one of the factors of production it is itself produced as a combined result of public inputs and private inputs parents decisions to invest time and material resources in education of their children are motivated by altruism heterogeneous in its strength across the population which leads to heterogeneity of incomes we investigate the effect of an increase in public funding for education on the human capital distribution we show that in this framework contrary to some earlier results increased spending on public education may lead to higher inequality our results depend crucially on the interaction of education funding with the social security budget and on the elasticity of substitution in the learning technology

development of the electricity environmental policy cge model gtap e powers a case of the carbon tax in south africa abstract a new carbon price mechanism with full emission coverage is developed within the framework of a global computable general equilibrium model gtap e powers to enhance the capacity and accuracy for climate change and energy policy assessment the model developed is then used to examine the potential impacts of the carbon tax in south africa results show that incorporation of non co2 emissions in the model significantly alters the results of which the economy of south africa experiences higher costs compared to the case that only has co2 emissions when more sectors are included in the policy it also puts higher costs on the economy as higher levels of emissions are subject to the carbon tax results also show that south africa only experiences small tradeoffs from introducing the carbon tax in all scenarios that is with a tax rate of 9 15 the country is able to reduce its emission levels by 12 25 15 6 at the costs of real gdp reduction by 1 17 1 59 fossil based industrial sectors are particularly worst off while clean and renewable energy sectors strongly expand their production the results indicate that south africa is likely to move to a low carbon and sustainable economy with such a policy

structural reform of social security governments around the world have enacted or are currently considering fundamental structural reforms of their social security pension programs the key feature in these reforms is a shift from a pure pay as you go tax financed system in which taxes on current workers are primarily distributed to current retirees to a mixed system that combines pay as you go benefits with investment based personal retirement accounts this paper discusses how such a mixed system could work in practice and how the transition to such a change could be achieved it then analyzes the economic gains that would result from shifting to a mixed system i turn next to the three problems that critics raise about any investment based plan administrative costs risk and income distribution finally i comment on some of the ad hoc proposals for dealing with the financial problem of social security without shifting to an investment based system

marginal tax rates and income new time series evidence this paper estimates the dynamic effects of marginal tax rate changes on income reported on tax returns in the united states over the 1950 2010 period after isolating exogenous variation in average marginal tax rates in structural vector autoregressions using a narrative identification approach i find large positive effects of tax cuts in the top 1 of the income distribution in contrast to earlier findings based on tax return data i also find large effects in other income percentile brackets a hypothetical tax reform cutting marginal rates only for the top 1 leads to sizeable increases in top 1 incomes and has a positive effect on real gdp there are also spillover effects to incomes outside of the top 1 but top marginal rate cuts lead to greater inequality in pre tax incomes

public pensions and growth abstract this paper investigates the relationship between the size of an unfunded public pension system and economic growth in an overlapping generation economy in which altruistic parents finance the education of their children and leave bequests unlike the existing literature we model intergenerational altruism by assuming that children s income during adulthood is an argument of parental utility unfunded public pensions can promote growth when families face liquidity constraints preventing them from investing optimally in the education of their children we consider two alternative ways of financing a public pension system either by levying social contributions in a lump sum manner or in proportion to labour income we find that there is no case for unfunded public pensions in economies where bequests are operative by contrast there exists a growth maximising size of the public pension system in economies where bequests are not operative and individuals are sufficiently patient

carbon tax subsidy policy choice and its effects in the presence of interest groups abstract interest groups such as industry organization public finance and environmental group may exert influences on policy makers when they are choosing environmental policies considering the situation that two countries where a domestic country suffers equal influence and a foreign country suffers different influences from these groups can choose carbon tax policy or carbon subsidy policy then this paper constructs a two staged game model to study how interest groups make differences to environmental policy choices and their impacts on policy level production carbon emission profit and welfare between countries results show that the domestic country will definitely choose carbon tax policy but the foreign country may make different choices furthermore if the foreign country chooses carbon subsidy policy the domestic country will set higher tax rate than the foreign country does but production carbon emission profit and welfare of the domestic country will be lower than those of the foreign country if the foreign country chooses carbon tax policy carbon tax rate production carbon emission profit and welfare are ambiguous between countries

optimal carbon taxes for china and implications for power generation welfare and the environment abstract china is expected to constitute about half of the world s emissions between 2010 and 2040 as concerns about climate change intensify the chinese government is poised to commit to a low carbon economy these conditions make china a suitable case in which to study how emission policies impact on energy supply welfare and the environment to achieve this purpose we incorporate abatement technologies into the gtap computable general equilibrium model and show that optimal taxes range between 0 03 for services and 2 02 for manufacturing in most cases simulated tax rates are by far higher than pollution taxes stipulated in the new chinese environmental tax law furthermore despite a decline in output of many sectors including the electricity sector overall welfare gains exist from introducing carbon taxes moreover these taxes reduce environmental pollution by approximately 62 5 in general carbon taxes are insufficient for mitigation in china and due to a coal dominant energy structure implementing these taxes leads to a decline in power generation hence the chinese aggressive investment strategy for renewable electricity technologies as stipulated in its 13th five year plan is understandable

regional heterogeneity and the refinancing channel of monetary policy we argue that the time varying regional distribution of housing equity influences the aggregate consequences of monetary policy through its effects on mortgage refinancing using detailed loan level data we show that regional differences in housing equity affect refinancing and spending responses to interest rate cuts but these effects vary over time with changes in the regional distribution of house price growth we build a heterogeneous household model of refinancing with mortgage borrowers and lenders and use it to explore the monetary policy implications arising from our regional evidence we find that the 2008 equity distribution made spending in depressed regions less responsive to interest rate cuts thus dampening aggregate stimulus and increasing regional consumption inequality whereas the opposite occurred in some earlier recessions taken together our results strongly suggest that monetary policy makers should track the regional distribution of equity over time

the political economy of environmental policy with overlapping generations a two sector overlapping generations model illuminates the intergenerational effects of a tax that protects an environmental stock a traded asset capitalizes the economic returns to future tax induced environmental improvements benefiting the current asset owners the old generation absent a transfer the tax harms the young generation by decreasing their real wage future generations benefit from the tax induced improvement in environmental stock the principal intergenerational conflict arising from the tax is between generations alive at the time society imposes the policy not between generations alive at different times a pareto improving tax can be implemented under various political economy settings

the intergenerational state education and pensions allocation is inefficient when generations overlap this failure can be mitigated by properly designed social arrangements we show that public financing of education and public pensions can be designed to implement an intergenerational transfer scheme supporting the complete market allocation neither the public financing of education nor the pension scheme we consider resemble standard ones in our mechanism via the public education system the young borrow from the middle aged to invest in human capital they pay back the debt via a social security tax the proceedings of which finance pension payments when the complete market allocation is achieved the rate of return implicit in this borrowinglending scheme should equal the market rate of return

monetary policy natural resources and federal redistribution can monetary policy shocks induce redistribution across natural resource rich and poor states within a federation we conjecture that resource rich states are capital intensive hence their investment is more responsive to changes in monetary policy consequently contractionary monetary policy shocks e g increases in the interest rate may induce redistribution from resource poor states to resource rich ones via an equalizing federal transfer scheme because investment is reduced more strongly in the latter we test these hypotheses using a panel of u s states covering several decades and find that 1 resource rich states are significantly and persistently more capital intensive 2 contractionary monetary policy shocks induce a relative drop increase in investment federal transfers in resource rich states over the course of four years 3 these patterns are driven by resource induced differences in the capital share in the economy we estimate that a one standard deviation contractionary monetary shock induces within the first year federal redistribution of approximately 2 5 billion from the resource poor to the resource rich states representing about 11 of the total average annual federal transfers received by the latter states

the aggregate implications of regional business cycles during the last recession and its aftermath aggregate price growth and aggregate nominal wage growth remained robust despite the high rate of unemployment we document that u s states with weaker labor markets experienced lower price growth lower nominal wage growth and lower real wage growth during the great recession given that reliable measures of local prices do not exist we create our own state price indices using scanner data from the nielsen retail scanner database the main innovation of the paper is the development of an econometric procedure that combines cross region data with aggregate time series data to infer the underlying shocks driving both aggregate and regional business cycles applying our procedure to the great recession we find that a combination of both demand and supply shocks are necessary to account for the joint dynamics of aggregate prices wages and employment during the 2007 2012 period in contrast we find that only demand shocks are needed to explain the cross region variation the results suggest that only using cross region variation to explain aggregate fluctuations is insufficient when shocks do not have a substantive regional component

domestic politics foreign interests and international trade policy reply this paper incorporates the foreign interest in the determination of a country s international trade policy into a model of political competition between candidates contesting elective office we envisage foreign and domestic producer interests as expressing political support for a candidate via campaign contributions and candidates as making trade policy pronouncements to maximize political support from producer interests tariffs are divisive but vers are consistent with conciliatory policy positions yielding mutual gain to foreign and domestic interests no candidate has an interest in formulating a trade policy position using a tariff if a ver is a policy option protection in the developed countries has in recent years often taken the form of bilaterally negotiated voluntary export restraints vers rather than the more traditional unilaterally imposed import restrictions the use of voluntary export restraints has been paralleled by interest in the theoretical literature the effects of vers have been compared with tariffs and quotas and vers have been examined in a political economy framework with a view to identifying the gainers and losers from this form of restric

the spillover effects of good governance in a tax competition framework with a negative environmental externality we investigate the impact of a political regime shift affecting consumers business interests and lobby contributions when countries engage in tax competition in capital and a polluting resource when consumers have more influence than resource owners the resource tax rate and public spending rise while environmental damages lobbying contribution and the capital tax rate fall this response can spillover to other countries leading to lower welfare capital tax harmonization improves welfare of consumers and resource owners resource tax harmonization and governance harmonization both reduce the influence of lobbying and improve consumer welfare but resource owners are worse off

environmental policy and double dividend in a transitional economy abstract although the environmental benefit from implementing a climate tax is usually realized the economic dividend still remains a controversial issue warranting further research this is because the impact of an environmental policy on an economy wide system will depend on factors that differ from one region to the next in this paper we develop a static cge model for liberia that is capable of analyzing both a uniform and a partial carbon tax policy under the uniform policy instituted to ensure mitigation in the range of 20 50 an economic dividend is found for energy employment and welfare in particular energy consumption increases by between 5 and 15 5 respectively interestingly under a second best policy which exempts economically strategic sectors from the tax no economic dividend is found for all three variables this time energy use declines by between 2 and 9 these suggest that a uniform environmental tax policy is a more viable option for liberia in particular as it does not only generate economic dividend for employment and welfare it also incentivizes liberia s adoption and use of renewable energy technologies in general based on the results obtained further conditions for the feasibility of a double dividend are proposed

tarnishing the golden and empire states land use restrictions and the u s economic slowdown abstract this paper studies the impact of state level land use restrictions on u s economic activity focusing on how these restrictions have depressed macroeconomic activity since 2000 we use a variety of state level data sources together with a general equilibrium spatial model of the united states to systematically construct a panel dataset of state level land use restrictions between 1950 and 2014 we show that these restrictions have generally tightened over time particularly in california and new york we use the model to analyze how these restrictions affect economic activity and the allocation of workers and capital across states counterfactual experiments show that deregulating existing urban land from 2014 regulation levels back to 1980 levels would have increased us gdp and productivity roughly to their current trend levels california new york and the mid atlantic region expand the most in these counterfactuals drawing population out of the south and the rustbelt general equilibrium effects particularly the reallocation of capital across states account for much of these gains

uncertainty and optimal social security systems this paper examines the annuity aspect of social security within the framework of an overlapping generations model the duration of life is assumed to be uncertain under a fully funded system demand for social security is determined by each generation so as to maximize expected lifetime utility taking into account the welfare of future generations under a pay as you go system with intergenerational transfers demand for retirement benefits by the working population takes into account taxes paid by descendants it is shown that the two modes of finance are equivalent in terms of all real aggregates effects of changes in expected lifetime and in the birth rate are analyzed starting at the optimal level a compulsory balanced increase in social security taxes and benefits is shown to increase short run savings

trade wars and trade talks when governments meet in the international arena their actions reflect the political situations at home previous studies of trade relations have focused on governments that are immune from political pressures and that act as benevolent servants of the public interest here we introduce domestic politics into the analysis of international economic relations we study the interactions between national leaders who are concerned both with providing a high standard of living to the general electorate and collecting campaign contributions from special interest groups our analysis sheds light on the determinants of the structure of protection in non cooperative and cooperative policy equilibria

assessing the impacts of china s environmental tax using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model abstract since 2018 china has put into practice the new environmental protection tax law which levies taxes on non greenhouse pollutants with stringent standards to fully study the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of this policy this paper establishes a dynamic country level compute general equilibrium cge model with the electricity sector disaggregated into 5 technologies and 19 major taxable pollutants included five scenarios are developed including the baseline scenario bau the low environmental tax scenario lowet the high environmental tax scenario highet the low environmental tax and low carbon tax scenario lowetc and the high environmental tax and high carbon tax scenario highetc the simulation results show that the environmental tax could help reduce emissions of most kinds of pollutants but bring negative effects on the gross domestic product gdp compared to the bau scenario the gdp loss by 2030 would be 0 10 0 21 0 32 and 0 67 in the lowet highet lowetc and highetc scenarios the emission of sulphur dioxide so2 will decrease by 3 55 7 15 6 70 and 13 01 and the emission of carbon dioxide co2 will be reduced by 2 21 4 62 8 91 and 16 77 the result also shows that the heavy polluted sectors and energy intensive sectors will suffer higher output loss while the clean energy sectors and service sector will experience an increase in the output in the policy scenarios

education social security and growth abstract we study the role of government s allocation of tax revenues between two outlays public investment in education a transfer to the young generation and social security benefits to the older generation in an overlapping generations economy with pay as you go social security and altruistically motivated transfers from parents to children we analyze how the allocation of the tax revenues between the two outlays affects growth and welfare in competitive equilibria a we obtain comparative dynamics results for nonstationary equilibria subject to a change in the allocation profile b for stationary equilibria we show that for a given allocation profile of the tax revenues educational subsidies can either increase the growth rate or decrease it depending on the parameters of the model preferences production function and the tax rate c if government seeks to allocate funds in a way that maximizes the growth rate we demonstrate that under some plausible conditions it is not optimal to maintain pay as you go social security however if parents preferences combine strong concern for their retirement with significant degree of altruism towards their children then pay as you go social security system does enhance growth and welfare

the power to tax analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution preface 1 taxation in constitutional perspective 2 natural government a model of leviathan 3 constraints on base and rate structure 4 the taxation of commodities 5 taxation through time income taxes capital taxes and public debt 6 money creation and taxation 7 the disposition of public revenues 8 the domain of politics 9 open economy federalism and taxing authority 10 toward authentic tax reform prospects and prescriptions epilogue notes selected bibliography index

foreign informational lobbying can enhance tourism evidence from the caribbean there exist legal channels for informational lobbying of u s policymakers by foreign principals foreign governments and private sector principals frequently and intensively use this institutional channel to lobby on trade and tourism issues this paper empirically studies whether such lobbying effectively achieves its goal of trade promotion in the context of caribbean tourism and suggests the potential for using foreign lobbying as a vehicle for development panel data are used to explore and quantify the association between foreign lobbying by caribbean principals and u s tourist arrivals to caribbean destinations a variety of sensitivity analyses support the finding of a strong association the policy implications are obvious and potentially important for developing countries

lobbying multisector trade and sustainability of free trade agreements this paper is concerned with the sustainability of free trade agreements fta fta sustainability is influenced by governments valuations of political contributions discount factors the lobbying position of the specific interest groups in the intra industry trade sectors and the sectoral coverage of the fta i find that i under certain conditions the fta under protectionist lobbying could be more sustainable than the fta under no political pressure ii the lobby supported fta is more sustainable than the lobby opposed fta and the fta under no political pressure and iii multisector trade enhances fta sustainability jel classification f12 f13 f15 lobbying commerce multisectoriel et durabilite des accords de libre echange ce memoire examine la durabilite des arrangements de libre echange ale celle ci est influencee par les evaluations par les gouvernements des contributions politiques les facteurs d escompte la position de lobbying des groupes d interet specifiques dans les secteurs de commerce intra industriel et la couverture sectorielle de l accord de libre echange l auteur trouve que i sous certaines conditions l ale pourrait etre plus durable s il y a lobbying protectionniste que si pression politique il n y a pas ii l ale supporte par du lobbying est plus durable que l ale oppose au lobbying et sans pression de lobbying et iii le commerce multisectoriel ameliore la durabilite de l ale

public education intergenerational transfers and fertility abstract we consider a three overlapping generations model with physical and human capital in the absence of credit markets to finance education investments the government provides public education for the young that can be financed through lump sum taxes on the middle aged and or the elderly embracing the golden rule criterion we analyse the welfare effects of public provision of education intergenerational transfers and changes in the demographic growth rate we identify sufficient conditions for welfare improvements following marginal increases in public education expenditures lump sum taxes on the middle aged and the population growth rate along a locally stable balanced growth path

to ban or not to ban foreign lobbying and cross national externalities this paper studies the costs and benefits of foreign lobbying we show how and when foreign lobbying can help internalize cross national externalities we argue that this is an often overlooked benefit of foreign lobbying we also study under what conditions a constitutional rule banning foreign lobbying is in the national interest of a country a key factor in this calculus is whether the interests of foreign lobby groups and domestic unorganized groups coincide or not we illustrate the logic with examples from trade policy and environmental regulation bannir ou ne pas bannir lobbying etranger et effets externes transnationaux ce texte etudie les couts et avantages du lobbying etranger on montre quand et comment que le lobbying etranger peut aider a internaliser des effets externes transnationaux on suggere que c est souvent un avantage qu on est porte a negliger du lobbying etranger on etudie sous quelles conditions une regle constitutionnelle bannissant le lobbying etranger peut etre dans l interet national d un pays un facteur cle dans ce calcul est le fait que les interets des groupes etrangers coincident ou non avec ceux des groupes nationaux non organises on illustre la logique sous jacente a l aide d exemples portant sur la politique commerciale et la reglementation environnementale

the intergenerational welfare state and the rise and fall of pay as you go pensions this article develops a theory of the two armed intergenerational welfare state consistent with key features of modern welfare arrangements and uses it to rationalise the rise and fall in generosity of pay as you go pensions solely on efficiency grounds by using the education arm a dynamically efficient welfare state is shown to improve upon long run laissez faire even when market failures are absent to release these downstream welfare gains without hurting any transitional generation help from the pension arm is needed in the presence of an intergenerational education externality pensions initially rise in generosity but can be replaced by fully funded pensions eventually

real time forecasting with a mixed frequency var this article develops a vector autoregression var for time series which are observed at mixed frequencies quarterly and monthly the model is cast in state space form and estimated with bayesian methods under a minnesota style prior we show how to evaluate the marginal data density to implement a data driven hyperparameter selection using a real time dataset we evaluate forecasts from the mixed frequency var and compare them to standard quarterly frequency var and to forecasts from midas regressions we document the extent to which information that becomes available within the quarter improves the forecasts in real time this article has online supplementary materials

pay as you go or funded social security a general equilibrium comparison abstract this paper demonstrates that the analysis of fiscal sustainability of social security must include the education funding dimension of public policy which affects the productivity of future workers this fact is true under both social security regimes pay as you go payg and fully funded ff we consider an olg economy where the government in addition to running social security also funds education via a dedicated tax the education tax rates are chosen in each period by a majoritarian rule we demonstrate contrary to conjectures in the literature that the ff social security system produces political support for a relatively higher compared to payg education funding and hence generates higher rates of human capital accumulation physical capital accumulation and economic growth furthermore it also results in a comparatively lower degree of income inequality

the impacts of carbon tax and complementary policies on chinese economy under the pressure of global warming it is imperative for chinese government to impose effective policy instruments to promote domestic energy saving and carbon emissions reduction as one of the most important incentive based policy instruments carbon tax has sparked a lively controversy in china this paper explores the impact of carbon tax on chinese economy as well as the cushion effects of the complementary policies by constructing a dynamic recursive general equilibrium model the model can describe the new equilibrium for each sequential independent period e g one year after carbon tax and the complementary policies are imposed and thus describe the long term impacts of the policies the simulation results show that carbon tax is an effective policy tool because it can reduce carbon emissions with a little negative impact on economic growth reducing indirect tax in the meantime of imposing carbon tax will help to reduce the negative impact of the tax on production and competitiveness in addition giving households subsidy in the meantime will help to stimulate household consumptions therefore complementary policies used together with carbon tax will help to cushion the negative impacts of carbon tax on the economy the dynamic cge analysis shows the impact of carbon tax policy on the gdp is relatively small but the reduction of carbon emission is relatively large

trade policy what s welfare got to do with it abstract the empirical trade policy literature based on by grossman and helpman grossman g and e helpman 1994 protection for sale american economic review 84 833 850 provides estimates of the u s and turkish governments weight on welfare significantly greater than on campaign contributions we explain this puzzle by incorporating political institutions and political instability

tax subsidy policies in the presence of environmentally aware consumers abstract we study policy measures to improve environmental quality in the presence of environmentally aware consumers we consider two sets of policy instruments uniform policies for the firms and policies that discriminate between the firms based on their environmental quality for the latter set either the better performer is rewarded with a subsidy or the worse performer is punished with a tax we find that while a uniform subsidy policy improves average environmental quality a uniform tax policy worsens it further while a discriminatory subsidy policy reduces total pollution and enhances aggregate welfare a discriminatory tax policy may increase total pollution and may reduce aggregate welfare

green lobbies and transboundary pollution in large open economies abstract we employ a common agency model of policy making to examine how green lobbies affect the determination of trade and environmental policies in two large countries that are linked by trade flows and transboundary pollution we show that the impact of green lobbying on environmental policy outcomes depends crucially on the prevailing trade regime cooperative or non cooperative on whether environmental agencies act in a unilateral or coordinated manner and on the size of the emission leakages and transboundary spillovers under free trade a unilateral increase in pollution taxes reduces domestic emissions at the cost of increased foreign emissions in this case if the emission leakages and the associated transboundary spillovers are large enough green lobbying can create a bias towards lower pollution taxes

integrated economic and environmental models for a multi stage cold supply chain under carbon tax regulation abstract the elevated level of public and organizations awareness concerning sustainability has necessitated the adoption of environmentally conscious practices in the management of supply chains as such classical inventory models wherein the sole measure of performance is cost minimization are no longer appropriate to handle such emerging and pressing issue this paper assesses the impact of accounting for carbon emissions resulting from transportation and storage activities of a cold item in the context of a multi stage supply chain comprised of a plant warehouse a distribution center dc and a retailer we present an operational cost minimization model a carbon footprint minimization model and a hybrid economic and environmental minimization model where all models seek to determine the optimal lot sizing and shipping quantities alongside the number of trucks to be used in the upstream and downstream directions of the supply chain as well as the number of freezer units utilized at the dc which is owned by a third party logistics provider the structural properties for the optimal solution of the three models are identified and solution algorithms are also proposed upon conducting computational experiments it turns out that the incorporation of carbon related costs through carbon tax regulation may call for adjusting the adopted operational policy which results in a minor increase in the operational cost however this increase is outweighed by the savings resulting from the carbon related costs numerical results of the sensitivity analysis on the carbon tax policy indicate that as the tax rate increases substantial reductions in the amount of carbon footprint emitted are realized and cost savings are also achieved when adopting the lot sizing and shipping policy of the third integrated model over the operational cost minimization model

social security intergenerational transfers and endogenous growth in this paper the effects of social security in a simple model of endogenous growth with alternative motives of having children are analyzed it shows how the effects of social security depend on the size of the social security tax the motive to have children and the pattern of intergenerational transfers the pattern of intergenerational transfers itself however is shown to change with the social security tax rate when the social security tax is not too high social security increases per capita income growth and tends to enhance welfare