In this paper, we develop a simple theoretical model in order to explain how politicians choose between progressive and regressive tax schemes that serve to afford some local service production costs. It consists of a bipartisan model in which each party’s preferences are lexicographic, giving...

This paper reviews economic studies on rural-urban migration issues in China. The paper focuses on four issues: the household registration system in China, the profile of the migrants, explanations for rural-to-urban migration, and the interaction between migration and labor market evolution,...

There was (and still is) a lot of speculation about the current performance and structure of the Pietermaritzburg and uMgungundlovu District economy and business environment. The debate is mainly driven by haphazard observations and subjective feelings, thus hampering effective and efficient...

Regional push derives from the geographic agglomeration of economic activities, and is expressed in increments to national productivity. Various pieces of statistical evidence in favor of the existence of regional push effects in low- and middle-income economies are marshalled. The origins of...

This paper offers a review of the main progress made in entrepreneurship analysis and institutional economics, discussing its possible integration to general theory of economic development, considering the increasing importance that these topics have gained in contemporary approaches of...

This paper contributes to providing insights into the impact of decentralisation on poverty. It starts out with an overview of which role decentralisation plays in strategies and policies for poverty eradication and derives economic and political impact channels. It concentrates on the economic...

Many local public goods are provided by coalitions and some of them have network effects. Namely, people prefer to consume a public good in a coalition with more members. This paper adopts the Drèze and Greenberg (1980) type utility function where players have preferences over goods as well as...

This paper studies the Ramsey problem of optimal labor income taxation in a simple model economy which deviates from a first best representative agent economy in three important aspects, namely, flat rate second best tax, monopoly power in intermediate product market, and monopolistic wage...

This paper provides some further tests for the proposition that a larger public sector leads to smaller output volatility. Both Gali and Fatas & Mihov have provided some evidence which appears to support this proposition. Their evidence is, however, based on a relatively small sample of...

Due to a tax law implemented in 1998, Dutch employers can claim an extra tax deduction when they train employees aged 40 years or older. This causes a discontinuity in a firm's cost of training an employee. We exploit this discontinuity to identify two effects: the effect of the tax deduction on...