The federal government deploys a variety of institutions — patent, tax, and spending, among others — to encourage innovation. But legal scholars have given short shrift to how these institutions should be coordinated. In this Note, I argue that tax credits could be used to ameliorate a...

Empirical evidence suggests that charitable contributions to public goods may be driven not only by the familiar warm-glow of giving motive but also as a means for businesses to signal high product quality. Building on this finding, we present an analytical framework that characterizes the...

Government does lots of redistribution along with expenditures for defense, education, etc. Government imposes income taxes to finance these activities. Income taxation can be done to raise revenue in a simple transparent way. Here's a suggested scheme

Tax expenditure analysis (TEA) requires a baseline for identifying tax provisions that provide subsidies or incentives instead of serving to define the tax base and to implement the tax. With respect to the federal income tax, the baseline historically has been the Schanz-Haig-Simons (SHS)...

This paper investigates the effects of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) on residents of buildings qualifying for the credit. Specifically, it analyzes whether individuals who grow up in LIHTC housing are more likely to enroll in post-secondary education programs and have higher earnings...

Tax expenditures are generally defined as those government expenditures carried out through tax legislation, regulations, and practices that reduce or defer taxes for some taxpayers. There is a general concern that the tax expenditures negatively affect the budget and tax policies, which in turn...

This article criticizes a proposal recently put forward by the co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to abolish all tax expenditures and sharply reduce statutory tax rates. The author believes that abolishing all tax expenditures without regard to merit or a...

U.S.-based multinational corporations are calling for a tax holiday that would allow them to repatriate their foreign earnings at little tax cost. With over $1 trillion in earnings trapped offshore and untaxed by the U.S., these corporations characterize the proposed repatriation holiday as a...

As a public policy goal, moderation of financial instability has gained some prominence in the face of the current credit contraction. Not surprisingly perhaps, the role of tax policy in exacerbating instances of financial instability has begun to receive some attention in the tax-policy...

[Note: For a revised and expanded version of this paper, please see Hidden Foreign Aid, http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1044041]Whether the U.S. government should be allowed to claim credit for the private philanthropy of its citizens is a hot topic in today's foreign aid debate. Overlooked in...