The Australian Treasury contracted KPMG Econtech (2010) to estimate the efficiency cost of Australian taxes, using the MM900 Computable General Equilibrium model. The resultant report, endorsed by Treasury, was a major input into the Henry report into AustraliaÂ’s Future Tax System (AFTS) and...

The 'Henry tax review', Australia's Future Tax System (2010), recommended that royalties be abolished and replaced by a resource rent tax. Regarding abolition, AFTS drew on KPMG Econtech (2010a), a report commissioned by Treasury to investigate the efficiencies of a wide range of Australian...

In Shapiro and Pincus (2008), we proposed a method for arriving at just compensation of private owners of urban land, in cases like Kelo v New London, in which government has plans to use eminent domain to `take' private properties, to be assembled into a single parcel for some public purpose....

A small but important part of Buchanan's work is focussed on issues relating to federalism. This includes the early equalisation grants paper (from his doctoral dissertation), the midcareer papers on Tiebout processes and the later paper on fiscal cartels in The Power to Tax (1980). The aim of...

This paper presents estimates of the financial returns to the graduate, to the Treasury and to the Australian economy from undergraduate education. In addition, the paper indulges in some speculations about the efficiency of the policy changes.

This paper re-examines criticisms made of vertical fiscal imbalance in Australian and other federations. We argue that one of the central criticisms made of vertical fiscal imbalance is unproven. Vertical fiscal imbalance occurs when the central government collects more taxes than it spends on...

The burden of redevelopment projects, whether or not they ultimately benefit the communities in which they are undertaken, is borne disproportionately by those displaced. Neighborhoods are destroyed and residents are made to leave a home they love, compensated only by its market value. The...

Currently, the legitimate transfer of ownership of an asset occurs either through voluntary means - gift, bequest, sale - or through the use of state power - compulsory acquisition, resumption, eminent domain, court order. In Australia and elsewhere, compulsory acquisition of private property is...