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Pawns and Queens Revisited: Public Provision of Private Goods When Individuals Make Mistakes

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  • Jukka Pirttilä
  • Sanna Tenhunen

Abstract

This paper analyses the optimal tax policy and public provision of private goods when individuals differ in two respects: income-earning ability and rationality. Publicly provided goods should be overprovided or subsidised, relative to the decentralised optimum, if society’s marginal valuation of them exceeds the individual valuation and if these goods help relax the self-selection constraints, formulated in a new way. Optimal marginal income tax rates are shown to differ from the standard rules if publicly provided goods and labour supply are related.

Suggested Citation

  • Jukka Pirttilä & Sanna Tenhunen, 2005. "Pawns and Queens Revisited: Public Provision of Private Goods When Individuals Make Mistakes," Working Papers 212, Työn ja talouden tutkimus LABORE, Labour Institute for Economic Research LABORE.
    • Handle: RePEc:pst:wpaper:212
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Henrik Jordahl & Luca Micheletto, 2005. "Optimal Utilitarian Taxation and Horizontal Equity," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 7(4), pages 681-708, October.
    2. Jukka Pirttilä & Matti Tuomala, 2002. "Publicly Provided Private Goods and Redistribution: A General Equilibrium Analysis," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 104(1), pages 173-188, March.
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    4. Sören Blomquist & Vidar Christiansen, 2003. "Is there a Case for Public Provision of Private Goods if Preferences are Heterogeneous? An Example with Day Care," CESifo Working Paper Series 938, CESifo.
    5. Tarkiainen, Ritva & Tuomala, Matti, 1999. "Optimal Nonlinear Income Taxation with a Two-Dimensional Population; A Computational Approach," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 13(1), pages 1-16, February.
    6. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    7. Blomquist, Soren & Micheletto, Luca, 2006. "Optimal redistributive taxation when government's and agents' preferences differ," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 1215-1233, August.
    8. repec:bla:scandj:v:104:y:2002:i:1:p:173-88 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Schroyen, Fred, 2005. "An alternative way to model merit good arguments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(5-6), pages 957-966, June.
    10. Le Grand, Julian, 2003. "Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy: Of Knights and Knaves, Pawns and Queens," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199266999.
    11. Cremer, Helmuth & Gahvari, Firouz, 1997. "In-kind transfers, self-selection and optimal tax policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 97-114, January.
    12. David Laibson, 1997. "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 443-478.
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    Cited by:

    1. Ravi Kanbur & Jukka Pirttilä & Matti Tuomala, 2006. "Non‐Welfarist Optimal Taxation And Behavioural Public Economics," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(5), pages 849-868, December.

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods

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