BACKGROUND How electronic cigarettes and similar products (e-cigarettes) are defined affects how they are regulated, particularly whether existing laws for cigarettes apply, including sales and marketing, youth access, smoke-free and taxation laws. METHODS We examined the text of 46 bills that define e-cigarettes enacted in 40 states and characterised how e-cigarettes and similar products wer...

Both bankruptcy regulation and redistributive taxation vary considerably across US states. We model the interactions between these two policies: redistributive taxation targets intratemporal inequality whereas asset exemptions in bankruptcy procedures help agents to smooth consumption across time. We derive sufficient conditions under which more redistributive taxation makes bankruptcy exemptio...

The present study examines how the degree of progressivity of the U.S. Federal Income Tax has changed over time (from 1929 through 2009). Data from the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Census Bureau, and Bureau of Economic Analysis is used to construct “tax concentration curves” and “income concentration curves” (of which the well known Lorenz Curve is an example) for each year during this time p...

We consider redistributional taxation between people with and without human capital if education is endogenous and if individuals differ in their perceptions about own ability. Those who see their ability as low like redistributive taxation because of the transfers it generates. Those who see their ability as high may also like redistributive taxation because it stops other people receiving edu...

Analyzing voting on income taxation usually implies mathematically cumbersome models. Moreover, a majority voting winner does not usually exist in such setups. Therefore, it is important to mathematically describe those cases in which a majority winner exists, at least for the basic models of voting on income taxation. We provide a complete mathematical description of those income distribution ...

Sarah A. Roache and Lawrence O. Gostin’s recent editorial comprehensively presents soda taxation rationales from a public health perspective. While we essentially agree that soda taxes are gaining momentum, this commentary expands upon the need for a better understanding of the policy processes underlying their development and implementation. Indeed, the umbrella concept of soda taxation actual...

Despite the intensifying debate over the taxation of Internet commerce, the relevant issues have not been given a systematic treatment in the context of the literature on optimal taxation. This article presents such an analysis and investigates separately the taxation of business purchases of intermediate goods, the taxation of consumer purchases of final goods and services, and the various iss...

We utilize a simple overlapping generations model with a balanced budget rule to study the effect of distortionary taxation on cycles and local stability of equilibria. We show that under proportional taxation there is a critical tax rate above which cycles will vanish, while in the case of linearly progressive taxation there is a critical level of exemption below which cycles will vanish as we...