To understand the role of evidence in tax policy design, this paper organizes the empirical analysis of reform under five loosely related headings: (i) key margins of adjustment, (ii) measurement of effective tax rates, (iii) the importance of information and complexity, (iv) evidence on the size of responses, and (v) implications from theory for tax design. The context for the discussion is th...

We investigate the implications and logical relations between progressivity (a principle of distributive justice) and merging-proofness (a strategic principle) in taxation. By means of two characterization results, we show that these two principles are intimately related, despite their different nature. In particular, we show that, in the presence of continuity and consistency (a widely accepte...

Geothermal energy is one of the cleanest sources of energy which is gaining importance as an alternative to hydrocarbons. Geothermal energy reserves in China are enormous and it has a huge potential for exploitation and utilization. However, the development of the geothermal industry in China lags far behind other renewable energy sources because of the lack of fiscal and taxation policy suppor...

OBJECTIVE To examine the influence of real on-trade and off-trade alcohol prices and socioeconomic and environmental factors on rates of violence-related emergency department (ED) attendances in England and Wales over an 8-year period. METHODS Anonymised injury data which included attendance date, age and gender of patients aged over 18 years who reported injury in violence were collected fro...

The recent literature on taxation and growth has stressed the optimality of a zero long-run taxation on all accumulative factors of production. For a given path of government spending, the optimal tax plan requires the government to build up a positive stock of public wealth in the short run in the long-run, government spending can be financed with the income accruing from the management of the...

In a recent contribution, H. Naito (1999) has shown that production efciency may be violated in the optimum with non-linear income taxation. Using a slightly simpler framework, this paper complements Naito's analysis in showing that production e ciency does not hold in the optimum with (i) non-linear and (ii) linear income taxation provided that second best and rst best do not coincide. These n...

Redistributive Taxation and Personal Bankruptcy in US States Both personal bankruptcy and redistributive taxes can insure households’ consumption risk and both vary considerably across US states. We derive sufficient conditions under which more redistributive taxation makes bankruptcy exemptions less attractive both for the intratemporal insurance and for inter-temporal consumption smoothing. E...

Informal payments are a frequently overlooked source of local public finance in developing countries. We use microdata from ten countries to establish stylized facts on the magnitude, form, and distributional implications of this "informal taxation." Informal taxation is widespread, particularly in rural areas, with substantial in-kind labor payments. The wealthy pay more, but pay less in perce...

We analyze non-cooperative commodity taxation in a symmetric twocountry trade model characterized by monopolistic competition and international firm and capital mobility. In this setting, taxes in one country affect foreign welfare through the relocation of mobile firms and through changes in the rents accruing to capital owners. With consumption-based taxation, these fiscal externalities exact...