This paper discusses in a systematic and comprehensive way the existing literature on the relationship between the growth of countries’ economies and various public finance instruments, such as tax policy, expenditure policy, and overall budgetary policy, from the perspectives of allocative...

This paper discusses important tax policy issues facing developing countries today. It views tax policy from both the macroeconomic perspective, which focuses on broad questions such as the level and composition of tax revenue, and the microeconomic perspective, which focuses on certain design...

This paper analyzes anew the relationship between taxation and the household saving rate. On the basis of standard savings and tax revenue data from, it provides compelling and robust empirical evidence of a powerful impact of taxes on household savings. In particular, income taxes are shown to...

Corruption, particularly political or “grand” corruption, distorts the entire decision-making process connected with public investment projects. The degree of distortions is higher with weaker auditing institutions. The evidence presented shows that higher corruption is associated with (i)...

Taxes affect the degree and efficiency of financial intermediation in many different ways. This paper summarizes the main tax provisions in OECD countries that affect the overall “tax wedge” between pre-tax returns on investments, and the post-tax yield on the savings that finance them. This...

There is a widespread presumption that decentralization improves public service provision. This has led to policy prescriptions that are assiduously adhered to by countries and international. This paper reviews the recent evidence from OECD countries-which is seen to be inconclusive. This...