A notable feature and principal virtue of Tax by Design is its system-wide perspective on different elements of the tax system. This review essay builds on this trait and offers a more explicit foundation for the report's general approach, drawing on a distribution-neutral methodology that is...

Unconventional fiscal policy uses announcements of future increases in consumption taxes to generate inflation expectations and accelerate consumption expenditure. It is budget neutral and time consistent. We provide preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of such policies using changes in...

The theory of international macroeconomics shows that domestic tax policy in a global economy affects foreign economic conditions via complex, dynamic interactions through relative prices, tax revenues, and wealth distribution. This paper proposes a tractable quantitative framework for assessing...

The internal market in Europe will greatly increase the international mobility of resources. How will this affect fiscal policy in different countries? The first part of the paper considers taxation of capital in a two country model, where a democratically chosen government in each country...

Requiring agents with private information to select from a menu of incentive schedules can yield efficiency gains. It will do so if, and only if, agents will receive further private information after selecting the incentive schedule but before taking the action that determines where on the...

I study the allocation of human capital in an economy with production externalities, financial constraints and career choices. Agents choose to become entrepreneurs, workers or financiers. Entrepreneurship has positive externalities, but innovators face borrowing constraints and require the...

The merits of capital levies depend on the likelihood of repetition, the extent of anticipation, and its effects on distribution. The relevance of these features, which in varying degrees is underdeveloped or underappreciated in pertinent literatures, is elaborated and then considered with...

In a previous paper I described how the tax design called the X Tax would facilitate an international tax system free of many of the complexities and avoidance opportunities plaguing the existing international tax regime and also have neutrality properties generally deemed desirable. A choice...

We use a model of automation to show that with the current U.S. tax system, a fall in automation costs could lead to a massive rise in income inequality. This inequality can be reduced by raising marginal income tax rates and taxing robots. But this solution involves a substantial efficiency...

We examine majority choice of tax instruments in single- and multi-jurisdictional economies with heterogeneous households. In our framework majority voting equilibrium exists despite the multidimensional policy choice set. We identify five competing incentives that influence choice of tax...