This paper evaluates the impact of a reduction in the child qualifying age criteria for the One Parent Family Payment (OFP) in Ireland. From 2012 to 2015, the child qualifying age for OFP was reduced from 18 years to 7 years. Lone parents who no longer qualified for the payment, based on the age...

We use a new firm-level dataset to examine the efficiency of investment in emerging economies. In the three-year period following stock market liberalizations, the growth rate of the typical firm's capital stock exceeds its pre-liberalization mean by an average of 5.4 percentage points....

This paper presents numerical simulation results that suggest that China can both reduce its trade imbalance and receive welfare benefits by switching the value added tax (VAT) regime from the current destination principle to an origin principle. With the tax on exports exceeding that no longer...

The two main workhorses of state tax systems are levies on sales and individual incomes. In this paper we develop and implement a coherent methodology for characterizing these systems. The measures thus generated are used to show how the various systems differ across states, and how they evolved...

We explore the impact of a tax reform in some provinces of China which eliminated the value-added tax on some investment goods. While the goal of the experiment was to encourage upgrading of technology, our results suggest that there was no evident increase overall in fixed investment, and...

A notable feature and principal virtue of Tax by Design is its system-wide perspective on different elements of the tax system. This review essay builds on this trait and offers a more explicit foundation for the report's general approach, drawing on a distribution-neutral methodology that is...

We contribute to the literature on tax multipliers by analyzing the pitfalls in identification and measurement of tax shocks. Our main focus is on disentangling the discussion regarding the identification of exogenous tax policy shocks (i.e., changes in tax policy that are not the result of...

We explore the impact of a tax reform in some provinces of China which eliminated the value-added tax on some investment goods. While the goal of the experiment was to encourage upgrading of technology, our results suggest that there was no evident increase overall in fixed investment, and...

This paper focuses on two core tax design issues that arise in addressing current fiscal challenges It first explores the idea, prominent in troubled Eurozone countries, of a 'fiscal devaluation:' shifting from social contributions to the VAT as a way to mimic a nominal devaluation. Empirical...

This paper studies the fiscal incidence of a fiscal reform consisting of a reduction in employers' social insurance contributions financed by a tax based on the value added. In a closed economy with two sectors calibrated thanks to the French National Accounts, a "social VAT" leads to a rise in...