The relative constancy of non-financial corporate tax revenues as a share of US GDP masks offsetting trends in the ratio of corporate profits to GDP (declining) and the average tax rate (increasing). The average tax rate rose steadily between 1996 and 2003, an increase largely attributable to...

Public finance has both normative and positive elements, and moving between theory and practice requires attention to help us understand both what policies government should adopt and whether it is likely to do so. We should not be surprised when bad policies are adopted in spite of better...

"As the world economy slowly recovers from the very deep and widespread recession of recent years, many countries confront very serious fiscal imbalances. How much time they have to deal with these imbalances is a central question, the salience of which can only have been increased by the...