Presumptive taxation has been adopted in many countries to tax hard-to-tax activities and reduce evasion. Further, in view of the possible efficiency gains from such techniques, a case can be made for adopting presumptive taxation of global income. This paper addresses two questions. First,...

This paper examines the possibility of ascertaining the welfare changes that occur when a consumption tax replaces an equal-yield income tax. It finds that those with saving/income ratios greater than the social saving/income ratio under the income tax will surely benefit and those with ratios...

This paper discusses assessment of income on the basis of approximate indicators as opposed to conventional records. Such a method of assessment, known as presumptive income taxation, is widely used in many developing and industrial countries; however, it has been neglected in public finance...

This paper highlights the significance of open-economy considerations in the analysis of tax reforms. It focuses on domestic and international consequences of revenue-neutral conversion between income and value-added tax systems. The principal result is that the direction of changes in key...

There is an ongoing debate in the literature on whether global trade flows have become disconnected from the large real effective exchange rate movements in the wake of the global financial crisis. The question has important policy implications for the role of exchange rates in supporting growth...

After the decline in oil prices, many oil exporters face the need to improve their external balances. Special characteristics of oil exporters make the exchange rate an ineffective instrument for this purpose and give fiscal policy a sizeable role. These conclusions are supported by regression...

This paper examines the link between the net foreign asset position, the trade balance and the real exchange rate. In particular, it decomposes the impact of a country''s net foreign asset position (""external wealth"") on its long-run real exchange rate into two mechanisms: the relation between...

When does trade become a one-way relationship? We study bilateral trade balances for a sample of 18 European countries over the period from 1948 through 2008. We find that, with the introduction of the euro, trade imbalances among euro area members widened considerably, even after allowing for...

This paper uses an intertemporal optimizing model of a small open economy to analyze how terms of trade changes affect real exchange rates and the trade balance. We consider temporary current, anticipated future, and permanent changes in the terms of trade. The results suggest that the...

This paper uses a Ricardian framework to clarify the role of microeconomic and macroeconomic factors governing the time series and cross-section behavior of sectoral trade balances. Unit labor costs and trade balances are calculated for several sectors for the seven major industrial countries....