This paper examines the contribution of behavioral economics to tax reform by examining two major reforms in the United Kingdom which may be seen as natural experiments – the reform of local taxation and the introduction of value added tax. The case for both was based strongly on mainstream economic analysis but one was a failure and the other a success. The introduction of the local community ...

I take a new look at the long-run implications of taxation through the lens of modern Schumpeterian growth theory. I focus on the latest vintage of models that sterilize the scale effect through a process of product proliferation that fragments the aggregate market into submarkets whose size does not increase with the size of the workforce. I show that the following interventions raise welfare:...

In spite of some cutbacks in entitlements, many welfare states' spending has continuously increased over the past decades, leading to larger tax burdens and often higher marginal tax rates. Proposals for reform often focus on reduced social insurance benefits and more actuarial insurance premia. In this paper it is shown that such reforms may have a smaller potential for reducing the marginal t...

This paper examines the historical evolution of China's rural taxation system and provides an initial assessment of the ongoing rural tax reform. It is argued that the issue of rural taxation and local governance in China is one typical challenge arising from the inherent tension between an increasingly liberalized economic system and a still centralized political system. Though the rural tax r...

Introduction Recently, there has been renewed interest in the analysis of tax incidence in In part, this is motivated by the obvious need for tax reform in Africa, where revenues are small as a share of GDP (outside the economies with large mineral royalties) and the tax system is often highly distortionary, relying excessively on trade taxes and narrow commodity excises. Yet with every reform ...

This article examines the nature of India’s federal system, and recent and potential reforms in its structure and working. We summarize key federal institutions in India, focusing particularly on the mechanisms for Center-state transfers. These transfers are large, and are the major explicit method for dealing with inequalities across constituent units of the federation. We examine the evidence...

This article examines the nature of India’s federal system, and recent and potential reforms in its structure and working. We summarize key federal institutions in India, focusing particularly on the mechanisms for Center-state transfers. These transfers are large, and are the major explicit method for dealing with inequalities across constituent units of the federation. We examine the evidence...

The federal government is larger than conventional budget measures suggest. Many tax preferences are effectively spending programs. Adding these spending-like tax preferences to federal outlays and receipts makes the government appear about 4 percent of GDP larger. The 1986 tax reform cut these benefits, but they have since rebounded to a larger share of GDP than before. Using this broader meas...

Hardly any week passes by in ‘Old Europe’ without a discussion about tax reforms as a reaction to the fl at tax challenge of new member countries of the European Union (EU). By many observers this is interpreted as an expression of the race to the bottom that supposedly results from fi erce tax competition in Europe and around the globe. Instead of looking at descriptive fi gures of corporate i...