Due to the use of distortionary taxation, many believe that real-world economies should attain a lower level of public expenditures than one might suspect from the analysis of arti cial models where lump-sum taxes are assumed to be available. The paper examines this popular hypothesis by means of the two-type self-selection model of income taxation. I provide su cient conditions for both a lowe...

The net effects of switching from consumption taxation to inflation taxation on resource allocation and welfare crucially depend on production externalities. With elastic labor supply, raising inflation taxation decreases leisure, but increases the levels of real consumption, capital, and output. Moreover, this tax switch has two opposing effects on the level of real money balances: A positive ...

Differential tax analysis is used to show how the optimal mix of inflation tax and direct taxation changes with the relative size of the hidden economy. The larger the relative size of the hidden economy, the smaller the optimal ratio of direct tax to inflation tax. Anecdotal empirical evidence supports this result. JEL Classification: E62, H21, H26, O17.

The recent literature on optimal taxation may be seen as attempting to clarify the structure of the arguments advanced to support changes in the tax system, tracing the implications of taxes and quantifying (analytically) the trade-offs between the various objectives of tax policy. This literature has examined the optimal structure for particular types of taxation taken in isolation, such as th...