In the context of several examples of problems associated with present budgetary conventions, I revisit Musgrave's conceptual division of the government's program into Allocation, Distribution and Stabilization Branch subbudgets. I suggest progress towards Musgrave's ideal of a more informative...

As the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped public policies and government finances, it has also influenced the topics that public finance economists are researching. Because the 2020 International Institute of Public Finance (IIPF) Congress featured papers that were submitted prior to the start of the...

The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL) rejects the fundamental 'Ricardian' proposition, that the government budget constraint must hold identically, that is for all admissible values of the variables entering the budget constraint. Accordingly, if the government is to meet its contractual...

To help first- or second-year graduate students in economics apply their theoretical training, this paper shows how to solve a simple and intuitive computable general equilibrium (CGE) model using a calculator. Because this simplified Harberger model uses Cobb Douglas functional forms for...

This paper incorporates a bubble term in the standard FTPL equation to explain why countries with persistently negative primary surpluses can have a positively valued currency and low inflation. It also provides an example with closed-form solutions in which idiosyncratic risk on capital...

Many important questions in the field of public finance can be viewed as problems involving public policies in open economies. This paper draws together, from that perspective, a wide range of topics in public economics, emphasizing the implications of resource mobility for our understanding of...

The transfer elasticity of income tax rates is an important parameter in public finance. Given the significant fiscal autonomy of Swiss municipalities, Switzerland is an ideal setting for examining behavioral responses to tax policy. Using a regression kink design, we find robust causal evidence...

Research in behavioral economics has uncovered the widespread phenomenon of people making decisions against their own good intentions. In these situations, the government might want to intervene, indeed individuals might want the government to intervene, to induce behavior that is closer to what...

By the 2008/09 school year the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) abolished binding school catchment areas (SCAs) in all municipalities. The reform has been controversial and it was feared that school choice would increase ethnic segregation. Using data on all primary schools, we...