This paper presents a simple theory and test of an efficiency hypothesis for academic tenure and the process by which it is granted. Our approach argues that tenure is a response to the high cost of measuring academic potential and has survived as a low cost method by which the university can...

Governments are constantly attempting to use their tax systems for purposes other than the collection of revenue. Each such use entails difficult decisions of both design and administration. Consideration of a tax-based policy that might reduce wage inflation-a so-called TIP-serves to reveal the...

Uses data from laboratory experiments to estimate individual responses to tax, penalty, and audit rate changes, as well as to changes in government expenditures. The empirical results confirm some (although not all) theoretical predictions, and compare qualititatively with other empirical work

Uses experimental methods to analyze the long run impact of an amnesty. Explains post-amnesy compliance is higher when an amnesty is accompanied by increased enforcement efforts than when enforcement increases without an amnesty.

Examines the issues surrounding extension of sales taxes to services. Examines some of the problems that would face a reform effort: Nexus, the treatment of financial services, and an insufficiency of revenue.

Uses discrete-time hazard function estimation methods to examine the factors that affect the probability that a state will enact a lottery, where the probability is assumed to depend upon on economic, fiscal, demographic, and political factors.