Who benefits from the evasion of value added taxes (VAT)? Using a reform that enforced VAT on previously non-compliant large retailers in Armenia, we estimate a one-third passthrough of the tax burden on prices. This suggests that pre-enforcement evasion rents were broadly shared with consumers...

Using a panel of 97 mostly developing and transitional countries for the period 1990-2011, this paper explores fiscal implications of membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Em-ploying robust difference-in-difference specifications as well as semi-parametric methods, we find that...

The harmonized European value-added tax (VAT) is anything but a modern consumption tax that taxes all goods and services at a uniform rate. As exemplified by an analysis of the Dutch version, some 60% of the base is exempted, that is, not taxed on output but on inputs. This has serious...

In West Africa, the Value Added Tax (VAT) policy consists of a uniform tax rate, but several items consumed by rich and poor households, are exempted. We provide an optimal tax framework to reflect on the welfare effects of such a tariff structure, in the context of current debates on domestic...

The Mirrlees Review recommends that commodity taxation should in general be uniform, but with some goods consumed in conjunction with labour supply (such as child care) left untaxed. This paper examines the validity of this claim in an optimal income tax framework. Contrary to the recommendation...

We develop a tax competition model that allows for the setting of both an origin-based and a destination-based commodity tax rate in the presence of avoidance and evasion. In the presence of evasion, jurisdictions will give cross-border shoppers tax preferential treatment, thus not fully...

Building on the existing literature that examines the extent of redistribution in the Social Security system as a whole, this paper focuses more specifically on how Social Security affects the poor. This question is important because a Social Security program that reduces overall inequality by...

Immigration may impact income distribution both by affecting the skill composition of a country's residents, and, by changing relative factor supplies, its relative factor prices. We provide some background evidence on compositional factors but focus primarily on factor prices. We first consider...

China's emergence as a great economic power has induced an epochal shift in patterns of world trade. Simultaneously, it has toppled much of the received empirical wisdom about how labor markets adjust to trade shocks. Alongside its heralded consumer benefits, trade has both significant...

Using pairs of similar US and European firms listed on the S&P500 or StoxxEurope600, we examine effective tax differentials between US multinational corporations (MNCs) and their European peers. We show that statutory tax rates and profit shifting opportunities are important determinants of...