Marginal tax reform, externalities and income distribution.

The paper examines welfare improving and revenue neutral directions marginal policy reforms for an economy with nonidentical individuals and an externality that has a feedback effect on the consumption of taxed goods. It considers three types of policy instruments: the indirect taxes, the uniform poll transfer and public abatement. This extends the framework set up by Ahmad and Stern (1984), Bovenberg and de Mooij (1994) and Schöb (1996). The theoretical model is illustrated for a specific externality, namely congestion caused by peak car transport.

Capital-Intensive Projects Induce More Effort Than Labor-Intensive Projects

Central governments often subsidize capital spending by local governments, instead of subsidizing operating expenses or labor-intensive projects. This paper offers one explanation, focusing on the incentive effects for local officials--a local official can more easily shift the cost of optimizing a project to his successor on a labor-intensive project than on a capital-intensive project.Federalism; Capital subsidies; Transit subsidies

The political economy of fixed regional investment shares with an illustration for Belgian railway investments.

Many local public goods are allocated by federal governments using fixed regional shares: every region is entitled a fixed share of the total budget for a particular type of public good. This paper compares this fixed regional sharing rule with two alternative allocation rules: first best and common pool allocation. We find that the fixed regional sharing rule performs relatively well if the regional shares are reasonable. Legislative bargaining theory is used to study the determination of the fixed regional shares.

Urban Transport Pricing Reform With Two Levels Of Government

This paper analyses two challenges in the reform of urban transport pricing. The first challenge is the construction of an optimal package of urban transport pricing instruments assuming one benevolent government level that maximizes overall welfare. We examine the welfare gains from implementing in succession better parking prices, improved public transport prices and time varying tolling. It is found that parking and tolling are the most important elements of the optimal package and that the alternative policy instruments are sub-additive in their benefits. The second problem studied is the use of these pricing instruments by different government levels. We examine a case where an urban government controls parking fees and the regional government controls the tolling. Although both government levels have different objective functions, we find that the overall efficiency losses in the Nash and Stackelberg equilibria are limited.

Inefficiencies in regional commuting policy.

This paper discusses investments in transport infrastructure and incentives for commuting taxes in a multiregional setting. We study the horizontal and vertical interactions between governments. We identify incentives for strategic and tax exporting behavior that might lead to underinvestment in transport infrastructure. Furthermore, we show that the intensity of the strategic behavior is affected by geographic firm ownership structure, the number of labor-supplying regions and the revenue-sharing mechanism in the federation. A numerical example applies the insights on commuting in Belgium.

Should diesel cars in Europe be discouraged ?.

This paper examines the rationale for the different tax treatment of gasoline and diesel cars currently observed in Europe. First, we analyse possible justifications for a different tax treatment: pure tax revenue considerations, externality considerations and constraints on the tax instruments used for cars and trucks. Next, an applied general equilibrium model is used to assess the welfare effects of revenue neutral changes in the vehicle and fuel taxes on diesel and gasoline cars. The model integrates the effects on tax revenue, environmental externalities, road congestion, accidents and income distribution.

Capital-Intensive projects induce more effort than labor-intensive projects.

Central governments often subsidize capital spending by local governments, instead of subsidizing operating expenses or labor-intensive projects. This paper offers one explanation, focusing on the incentive effects for local officials. a local official can more easily shift the cost of optimizing a project to his successor on a labor-intensive project than on a capital-intensive project.

The Preferences of Voters Over Road Tolls and Road Capacity

We consider a congestible road, where the cost of travel increases with the number of users on the road and decreases with capacity. Those persons who do not use the road favor a toll which would maximize revenue, and they oppose spending on road capacity. Users of the road prefer a low toll and a large capacity financed by general revenues. We describe conditions that make majority voting lead to a toll and capacity level that equals the socially optimal toll and capacity, that is smaller, or that is larger. This model can also explain the decrease over time of user fees for road use.Positive analysis of policy-making and implementation; Externalities; Government policy on transportation

Reducing rent seeking by providing wide public service.

A winning coalition which sets policy cannot always ensure that members of the coalition will be the ones getting benefits. Different jurisdictions (including members of the winning coalition) may then engage in costly rent seeking. Maximizing the welfare of the winning coalition may therefore require providing services to jurisdictions which are not members of the winning coalition, thereby reducing rent seeking by members of the winning coalition. The paper shows how this mechanism can generate insuffcient supply of public services, and offers another explanation for the use of co-funding requirements by the central government.

The Relative Efficiency of Market-based Environmental Policy Instruments with Imperfect Compliance

This paper examines to what extent incomplete compliance of environmental regulation mitigates the distortions caused by pre-existing labour taxes. We study the relative cost efficiency of three market-based instruments: emission taxes, tradable permits and output taxes. In a first-best setting and given that monitoring and enforcement is costless, we find that the same utility levels can be reached with and without incomplete compliance. However, allowing for violations makes the policy instruments less effective. The nominal tax rate needs to be higher or the number of permits issued smaller, in order to obtain the required emission reduction. Including monitoring and enforcement aspects, and more specifically fines, into the model in a second-best setting, provides us with a new means of collecting tax revenues and of lessening existing tax distortions. We show that the relative position of grandfathered tradable permits vis-à-vis emission taxes improves considerably when allowing for incomplete compliance in a second-best settingEnvironmental policy, instrument choice, monitoring and enforcement