@article{Blackorby:271292, recid = {271292}, author = {Blackorby, Charles and Murty, Sushama}, title = {Constraints on Income Distribution and Production Efficiency In Economies with Ramsey Taxation}, address = {2009-05}, number = {2068-2018-2588}, series = {WERP 908}, pages = {30}, year = {2009}, abstract = {We study the link between second-best production efficiency and the constraints on income distribution imposed by private ownership of firms in economies with Ramsey taxation. We review the result of Dasgupta and Stiglitz [1972], Mirrlees [1972], Hahn [1973], and Sadka [1977] about firm-specific profit taxation leading to second-best production effi- ciency. Problems in the proofs of this result in these papers have been identified by Reinhorn [2005]. We provide an alternative, and with some hope a more intuitive, proof of this result. The mechanism employed in our proof is also used to show second-best production efficiency under some configuarations of private ownership without any (or at best, uniform) profit taxation. The results obtained raise questions about the genericity of the phenomenon of second-best production inefficiency and about recovering social shadow prices in such economies.}, url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/271292}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.271292}, }