Structural Tax Reforms and Public Spending Efficiency

Socially-Efficient Tax Reforms∗

We propose graphical methods to determine whether commodity-tax changes are “socially efficient”, in the sense of improving social welfare or decreasing poverty for large classes of social welfare and poverty indices. We also derive estimators of critical poverty lines and economic efficiency ratios which can be used to characterize socially-efficient tax reforms. The statistical properties of ...

School Reforms and School Spending Growth

The evolution of school spending over time is related to legislative school reforms expanding the scale and the scope of the school system. This study addresses the determination of legislative reforms and primary school spending, using a data base for Norway 1880 1990. Reforms are understood as the result of growth in demand for school services over time and economic and political conditions c...

Initiatives to Improve the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Public Spending:

Tax Reforms and Evidence of Transfer Pricing

The manipulation of transfer prices changes the relative tax burdens multinational firms face in their different countries of operation and may even reduce a firm’s worldwide tax payments. At the same time, transfer price manipulation will often trigger changes in the tariffs that are levied on intra-company imports. For this reason, when tax rates change, as they did for many countries during ...

Tax and Spending Incentives and Enterprise Zones

I n early 1994, IPSCO steel corporation, which had been negotiating with several states regarding the location of a new steel mill, was offered a $75.6 million package of incentives by the State of Iowa if the company located its plant along the Mississippi River in Musca-tine County, Iowa. The package included several new incentives available only in the " Quality Jobs Enterprise Zone " create...