Optimal Income Taxation and Public Good Provision in a Two-Class Economy

This paper combines the problem of optimal income taxation with the free-rider problem in public good provision. There are two groups of individuals with private information on their earning ability and their valuation of a public good. Adjustments of the transfer system are needed to discourage the more productive from exaggerating the desirability of public good provision. Similarly, the less productive need to be prevented from understating their valuation. Relative to an optimal income tax, which focuses solely on earning ability, income transfers are increased whenever a public good is installed and are decreased otherwise

On the legitimacy of coercion for the nancing of public goods

The literature on public goods has shown that e?cient outcomes are impossible if participation constraints have to be respected. This paper addresses the question whether they should be imposed. It asks under what conditions e?ciency considerations justify that individuals are forced to pay for public goods that they do not value. It is shown that participation constraints are desirable if public goods are provided by a malevolent Leviathan. By contrast, with a Pigouvian planner, e?ciency can be achieved. Finally, the paper studies the delegation of public goods provision to a pro?t-maximizing ?rm. This also makes participation constraints desirable.Public goods; Mechanism Design; Incomplete Contracts; Regulation

On the legitimacy of coercion for the nancing of public goods

The literature on public goods has shown that e?cient outcomes are impossible if participation constraints have to be respected. This paper addresses the question whether they should be imposed. It asks under what conditions e?ciency considerations justify that individuals are forced to pay for public goods that they do not value. It is shown that participation constraints are desirable if public goods are provided by a malevolent Leviathan. By contrast, with a Pigouvian planner, e?ciency can be achieved. Finally, the paper studies the delegation of public goods provision to a pro?t-maximizing ?rm. This also makes participation constraints desirable

On the Legitimacy of Coercion for the Financing of Public Goods

The literature on public goods has shown that efficient outcomes are impossible if participation constraints have to be respected. This paper addresses the question whether they should be imposed. It asks under what conditions efficiency considerations justify that individuals are forced to pay for public goods that they do not value. It is shown that participation constraints are desirable if public goods are provided by a malevolent Leviathan. By contrast, with a Pigouvian planner, efficiency can be achieved. Finally, the paper studies the delegation of public goods provision to a profit-maximizing firm. This also makes participation constraints desirable.Public goods, Mechanism Design, Incomplete Contracts, Regulation

Optimal Income Taxation and Public Goods Provision in a Large Economy with Aggregate Uncertainty

We study a large economy model in which individuals have private information about their productive abilities and their preferences. Moreover, there is aggregate uncertainty so that the social benefits from taxation and public goods provision are a priori unknown. The analysis is based on a mechanism design approach that imposes a requirement of robustness with respect to individual beliefs and a requirement of coalition-proofness. The paper provides a tractable and intuitive characterization of incentive-feasible tax and expenditure policies: Incentive constraints associated with productive abilities reflect only individual behavior, whereas those associated with public goods preferences reflect only collective behavior.optimal taxation, public goods provision, revelation of preferences, robust mechanism design

Optimal Income Taxation and Public Good Provision in a Two-Class Economy

This paper combines the problem of optimal income taxation with the free-rider problem in public good provision. There are two groups of individuals with private information on their earning ability and their valuation of a public good. Adjustments of the transfer system are needed to discourage the more productive from exaggerating the desirability of public good provision. Similarly, the less productive need to be prevented from understating their valuation. Relative to an optimal income tax, which focuses solely on earning ability, income transfers are increased whenever a public good is installed and are decreased otherwise.Income Taxation; Public Good Provision; Revelation of Preferences; Two-dimensional Heterogeneity

On the Legitimacy of Coercion for the Financing of Public Goods

The literature on public goods has shown that efficient outcomes are impossible if participation constraints have to be respected. This paper addresses the question whether they should be imposed. It asks under what conditions efficiency considerations justify that individuals are forced to pay for public goods that they do not value. It is shown that participation constraints are desirable if public goods are provided by a malevolent Leviathan. By contrast, with a Pigouvian planner, efficiency can be achieved. Finally, the paper studies the delegation of public goods provision to a profit-maximizing firm. This also makes participation constraints desirable.public goods, mechanism design, incomplete contracts, regulations

A unified approach to the revelation of public goods preferences and to optimal income taxation

We study a large economy model in which individuals have private information about their productive abilities and their preferences for public goods. A mechanism design approach is used to characterize implementable tax and expenditure policies. A robustness requirement in the sense of Bergemann and Morris (2005) yields individual incentive compatibility constraints that are equivalent to those in the theory of optimal income taxation in the tradition of Mirrlees (1971). Adding a requirement of coalition-proofness yields a set of collective incentive conditions which are akin those in the literature on public goods provision under private information on preferences, in the tradition of Clarke (1971) and Groves (1973).Optimal Taxation, Public goods provision, Revelation of Preferences, Robust Mechanism Design

On the optimality of optimal income taxation

The Mirrleesian model of income taxation restricts attention to simple allocation mechanism with no strategic interdependence, i.e., the optimal labor supply of any one individual does not depend on the labor supply of others. It has been argued by Piketty (1993) that this restriction is substantial because more sophisticated mechanisms can reach first-best allocations that are out of reach with simple mechanisms. In this paper, we assess the validity of Piketty's critique in an independent private values model. As a main result, we show that the optimal sophisticated mechanism is a simple mechanism, or, equivalently, a Mirrleesian income tax system.Optimal Income Taxation, Mechanism Design

On the legitimacy of coercion for the financing of public goods

The literature on public goods has shown that efficient outcomes are impossible if participation constraints have to be respected. This paper addresses the question whether they should be imposed. It asks under what conditions efficiency considerations justify that individuals are forced to pay for public goods that they do not value. It is shown that participation constraints are desirable if public goods are provided by a malevolent Leviathan. By contrast, with a Pigouvian planner, efficiency can be achieved. Finally, the paper studies the delegation of public goods provision to a profit-maximizing firm. This also makes participation constraints desirable.Public goods, Mechanism Design, Incomplete Contracts, Regulation