57 National Tax Journal Vol. LIV, No. 1 Abstract This paper tests whether state and local fiscal policy depended on the number of seats in the legislature in the first half of the 20th century. We find that large legislatures spent more, as implied by the “Law of 1/n” from the fiscal commons/logrolling literature. The same relation appears in the latter half of the century, and therefore seems ...

In a passive monetary and active fiscal policy regime, changes in the value of public debt generate wealth effects on households. Then, in contrast to the active monetary and passive fiscal policy regime, inflation moves oppositely from the inflation target and a stronger reaction of interest rates to inflation increases the response of inflation to shocks. Moreover, a higher level of public de...

We develop a simple macroeconomic model where the time inconsistency of optimal monetary policy is due to tax distortions. If fiscal policy is exogenously fixed at its optimal level, a Walsh contract (Walsh, 1995) offered to an independent central bank implements the optimal monetary policy. When fiscal policy is determined endogenously, however, this contract is subject to strategic manipulati...

Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F-2 Consolidated Balance Sheets as of March 31, 2003 and 2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F-3 Consolidated Statements of Operations for the Fiscal Years ended March 31, 2002, 2003 and 2004 . . . . . . F-4 Consolidated S...

Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F-2 Consolidated Balance Sheets as of March 31, 2005 and 2006 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F-3 Consolidated Statements of Income for the Fiscal Years ended March 31, 2004, 2005 and 2006 . . . . . . . . . F-4 Consolidated...

What is “power”? Most people have an intuitive notion of what it means. But scientists have not yet formulated a statement of the concept of power that is rigorous enough to be of use in the systematic study of this important social phenomenon. Power is here defined in terms of a relation between people, and is expressed in simple symbolic notation. From this definition is developed a statement...

To finance basic pro-poor services, the Government of Ghana must mobilize more public revenue. But tax reform has been highly controversial in Ghana. An attempt to introduce VAT in 1995 failed after widespread protests. Although a second attempt to introduce VAT in 1998 succeeded, strong resistance to tax reform remains, and the total tax base remains narrow and over-dependent on petroleum taxe...

Very diverse responses of monetary and fiscal policies have been observed around the world in the post global financial crisis period of 2010-2014. Our paper explores (i) whether the strategic interaction between the central bank and government can explain this diversity, and (ii) what lessons about the institutional design of the two policies can be learnt from it. Particular attention is paid...