Coase and Immigration | Cato Institute

Coase and Immigration | Cato Institute: "The government is unable to determine an efficient tax rate to internalize the costs of production. Government agents have their own motivations and incentives that do not coincide with creating efficient Pigouvian Tax rates. Politicians want to get elected, which means they could support tax rates based on their constituent’s desires. Those constituents will have complex incentives that have little to do with finding a tax level that minimizes the costs of pollutions to an efficient level. Some bureaucrats will want higher taxes to extend their revenue while others will think it weakens their control if taxes replace command and control regulations. If a tax is imposed on carbon dioxide and it turns out to be based on a faulty understanding of the science of climate change, the government will not surrender a large source of revenue."

"Immigration from 1990 to 2006, at worst, decreased wages for a quarter of Americans by around 3 percent but raised them by over 1 percent for 75 percent of Americans."

"language assimilation proceeds very rapidly in the U.S., driven by the roughly 20 percent increase in wages that immigrants can expect from learning English"