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Financing Public Goods with Commodity Taxes: The Tax Reform Viewpoint

Roger Guesnerie

Abstract

This article considers an economy in which there is one public good financed by means of commodity taxes (lump sum transfers being not available). The first part of the paper is devoted to the study of tax equilibria. Sufficient conditions for the existence of an equilibrium with respect to a given tax system are given. When the tax system is modified, the structure of the corresponding set of tax equilibria is analyzed, and continuity properties of equilibria (with respect to the tax system) are stated. In the second part, attention is focused on the Pareto ranking of tax equilibria. In a given equilibrium, the directions of policy tools changes for a Pareto improvement (if any) are characterized. The "size" of the set of second best Pareto optima in the set of tax equilibria is evaluated.