TY  - JOUR
AU  - Alesina,Alberto
AU  - Weil,Philippe
TI  - Menus of Linear Income Tax Schedules
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3968
PY  - 1992
Y2  - January 1992
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3968
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3968.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alberto F. Alesina
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center 210
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-8388
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: aalesina@harvard.edu

Philippe Weil
Director, Universite Libre de Bruxelles
ECARES
50, Avenue Roosevelt CP 114
B-1050 Brussels  BELGIUM
Tel: 32-2-650-4220
Fax: 32-2-650-4475
E-Mail: philippe.weil@ulb.ac.be
AB  - Relative to traditional piecewise linear income taxation schemes, it is possible to increase government revenues by offering to consumers a menu of linear income tax schedules. In the resulting Pareto-superior equilibrium, consumers sort themselves out according to their (unobservable) productivity level, with high productivity agents choosing the tax schedules with low marginal tax rate and high intercept. This scheme extracts from the economy an unexploited source of revenue which, in contrast with standard supply-side proposals, does not depend on the economy being on the downward-sloping side of the Laffer curve.
ER  -