The traditional view that excise taxes are regressive has been challenged. I document the history of the term regressive tax, show that traditional definitions have always found cigarette taxes to be regressive, and illustrate the implications of the greater price responsiveness observed among the poor. I explain the different definitions of tax burden: accounting, welfare-based willingness to ...

Exploring an alternative way to approach famine relief interventions, this paper draws on the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault and David Keen's recent work on south-west Sudan. It suggests that different discourses on 'famine' can lead to the dominance of certain kinds of institutional practices, and the prioritisation of special kinds of knowledge, at the expense of other modes of un...

the first experimental sam for iran was constructed more than three decades ago under the supervision of prof. pyatt. based on this work prof pyatt had observed that the way in which iran was spending oil revenues was likely to exacerbate urban—rural income differentials in iran. in his approach to sam he did not distinguish between factorial and institutional income distributions preferring to...

Compact city development has, over the last 20 years or so, emerged as the preferred response to the goal of sustainable development. As such, it is pertinent to examine planning practices to see whether the traditional economic bias in planning is now balanced by aims and practices in support of environmental and social sustainability. In this light the social, environmental, and economic goal...

This article argues that the relatively new field of personnel economics (PE) holds strong potential as a tool for studying public sector workforces. This subfield of labor economics is based on a strong foundation of microeconomics, which provides a robust theoretical foundation for studying workforce and organizational design issues. PE has evolved on this foundation to a strong practical emp...

It is a matter of great pleasure for me to extend, on behalf of the ICAR and on my personal behalf, a warm welcome to all, especially to our very distinguished delegates who have traveled from various parts of the world to participate in the Conference. I am glad to share with you that the Conference is being held at a time when our Central Institute on Buffalo Research has completed 25 years o...

This paper describes one university’s approach to improving the quality of teaching and learning at the institutional level, based on the premise of improving the design of curriculum rather than focusing on the skills of teachers as such. The paper describes the process by which university-wide principles of curriculum design were defined and agreed, as well as the parallel campaigns needed to...