Interest rates on government debt have fallen in many countries over the last several decades, with markets indicating that rates may stay low well into the future. It is by now well understood that sustained low interest rates can change the nature of long-run fiscal policy choices. In this...

It has been well recognized that population ageing could generate structural changes centered around the dwindling labor force, on one hand, and the expanding dependency on the generosity of the welfare state, on the other hand. Ageing-related welfare state policy entails both fiscal issues and...

Countries that implement wealth taxes make many practical compromises regarding relative treatment and approach to valuation of different categories of assets in order to ease assessment and liquidity difficulties with this form of taxation. Relying on Norwegian variation in tax and base rules,...

We study optimal taxation in a model with endogenous financial frictions, risky investment and occupational choice, where the distribution of wealth across entrepreneurs affects how efficiently capital is used. The planner chooses linear taxes on wealth, capital and labor income to maximize the...

This paper investigates the simultaneous relationship between tax rates and city property tax bases using data for 86 large U.S. cities in 1967, 1972, 1977, and 1982. We find that a 10 percent increase in the city's property tax rate decreases the city's tax base by about 1.5 percent. In...

Although the Ricardian Equivalence Theorem holds under a linear estate tax schedule, it fails to hold under a nonlinear estate tax schedule. In a representative consumer economy, a temporary lump-sum tax increase reduces contemporaneous consumption. If different consumers face different marginal...

The taxation of corporate assets is well understood to influence investment and firm valuation. This paper explores the consequences of postwar U.S. tax changes in a dynamic model which incorporates costs of adjustment and investor expectations of future tax reforms and macroeconomic...

The article identifies the key assumptions that underlie competing theories of the incidence of the local property tax. We conclude that the"benefit view" which maintains that the property tax system is equivalent to a set of non-distortionary user changes is correct only under very restrictive...

The"new view" of the property tax is reformulated within the context of a model with interjurisdictional competition, endogenous local public services, individuals who are segregated into homogeneous communities according to tastes for local public services, a simple form of land use zoning, and...

This paper is an introductory chapter to a book that brings together 22 of my papers written between 1965 and 1981. The chapter provides a summary of each paper and a more general discussion of the role of taxation in influencing the process of capita1 accumulation. The four sections of the book...