This paper estimates the effects of tax incentives on charitable contributions in the UK, using the universe of self-assessment income tax returns between 2005 and 2013. We exploit variation from a large reform in 2010 to estimate intensive and extensive-margin tax-price elasticities of giving....

This paper considers the optimal taxation of savings intermediation and payment services in a dynamic general equilibrium setting, when the government can also use consumption and income taxes. When payment services are used in strict proportion to final consumption, and the cost of...

This paper provides a simple political agency model to explain the effect of political alignment between different tiers of government on intergovernmental grants and election outcomes. Key features of the model are: (i) rational voters interpret public good provision as a signal of incumbent...

This paper synthesizes and extends the literature on the taxation of foreign source income in a framework that covers both greenfield and acquisition investment, and a general constraint linking investment at home and abroad for the multinational by introducing a cost of adjustment for the...

This paper studies Comprehensive Performance Assessment, an explicit incentive scheme for local government in England. Motivated by a simple theoretical political agency model, we predict that CPA should increase service quality and local taxation, but have an ambiguous effect on the efficiency...

We develop a conceptual framework which captures the effect of the VAT system on profit by two effective taxes. This allows (i) predictions of the determinants of voluntary registration and bunching at the registration threshold; (ii) develops a formula for estimating the elasticity of...

This paper considers the implications of an important cognitive bias in information processing, confirmation bias, in a political agency setting. In the baseline two-period case where only the politician’s actions are observable before the election, we show that when voters have this bias, it...

This paper studies the relationship between fiscal decentralization and electoral accountability, by analyzing how decentralization impacts upon incentive and selection effects, and thus on voter welfare. The model abstracts from features such as public good spillovers or economies of scale, so...

This paper considers the relationship between tax competition and growth in an endogenous growth model where there are stochastic shocks to productivity, and capital taxes fund a public good which may be for final consumption or an infrastructure input. Absent stochastic shocks, decentralized...

This paper considers the optimal taxation of savings intermediation and payment services in a dynamic general equilibrium setting, when the government can also use consumption and income taxes. When payment services are used in strict proportion to final consumption, and the cost of...