When external effects are important, markets will be inefficient, and economists have considered several broad classes of economic instruments to correct these inefficiencies. However, the standard economic analysis has tended to take the region, and the government, as a given; that is, this...

Fiscal decentralization reform, the reform of fiscal relations between different levels of government, is an important fiscal policy issue in many African countries. While for many African nations the decentralized delivery of government goods and services is a relatively new concept, the issue...

“Behavioral economics”, or the application of methods and evidence from other social sciences to economics, has increased greatly in significance in the last two decades. In this paper we discuss the basic elements of behavioral economics. We then assess several applications of behavioral...

This authoritative two-volume set brings together the most important classic and contemporary papers on taxation and tax policy, written by the world’s leading scholars and practitioners of taxation.

In recent decades countries around the world have seen a wide diversity of tax reforms, both in major systematic changes and through more specific areas of tax, such as value-added and income tax. The results of these reforms, however, have been unequal and many issues remain unresolved. With...

It is hard to think of anyone who has contributed so much and so widely to research in international public finance in the last 40 years as has Richard Bird. This volume of essays emerged from a conference dedicated to him. It also expands on our understanding of international public finance.

Indonesia is currently facing some severe challenges, both in political affairs and in economic management. One of these challenges is the recently enacted decentralization program, now well underway, which promises to have some wide-ranging consequences. This edited volume presents original...

The United States has more automobiles per capita than any other country in the industrial world, and taxpayers use those automobiles for business and nonbusiness purposes. The former classification affords favorable individual income tax treatment, while the latter does not. However, to secure...

"Behavioral economics", or the application of methods and evidence from other social sciences to economics, has increased greatly in significance in the last two decades. An important method by which many of its predictions have been tested has been via laboratory experiments. In this paper I...

In the late 1990s, China enacted a rural tax reform known as the "Tax-for-Fee Reform" (TFR), largely driven by a desire to address farmers' complaints about their perception of a heavy and regressive tax burden. This paper examines the impact of the TFR on inequality in rural villages in China....