All government agencies charged with the responsibility of estimating distributional effects use annual income to classify households and one year's tax to characterize tax burdens. In this paper, we describe an alternative procedure to estimate lifetime tax burdens as proportions of lifetime...

Fundamental tax reform may change relative prices of consumption goods and may therefore have important effects on the uses side that are ignored by most general equilibrium simulation models. For a uniform rate of tax, in our model, results on the uses side are driven by the nonuniform tax...

Recent academic research on tax incidence has shifted from an emphasis on static and annual perspectives to examinations of dynamic and lifetime issues. Meanwhile, policy economists are forced to rely on annual data and hence annual analyses. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the nature...

Discusses the nature and analysis of lifetime tax incidence, and compares and contrasts this lifetime perspective with the more familiar annual perspective.

Theories of fiscal illusion and political competition have different implications for (i) the causal relationships between taxes and spending, and (ii) government size. These are tested using data from u.s. states from 1950 to 1990. We find evidence that greater political competition generally...

We test implications of political competition theory concerning government size, using data from U.S. states. We find that greater political competition in the race for governor acts as a check against bigger government. Evidence on the effectiveness of legal limits on expenditures and/or...

Examines what we do and do not know about two types of behavioral responses most critical to the consumption-tax versus income tax debate. Shows how our uncertainty about the sizes of these behavioral responses can be translated into statements of uncertainly about the economic effects of a...

This paper explores the often-neglected relationship between welfare reform and tax policy. It sets forth the objectives that underlie welfare reform, then compares expenditure-based and tax-based policy strategies that states and the federal government are taking. The examination suggests that,...