Should inflation be thought of as “just another tax?” The theoretical basis for doing so dates back to Phelps (1973) and has been greatly refined ever since. Since optimal taxation minimizes the deadweight loss by equalizing the marginal distortions of all available taxes, including the...

The paper discusses various possible approaches to turnover taxation in cyberspace. It shows that the main challenge of the new economy is to effectively cope with B2C international trade in digital online goods and services. However, most approaches to turnover taxation discussed in the...

In this paper I analyse four different but related concepts, each of which highlights some aspect of the way in which the state acquires command over real resources through its ability to issue fiat money. They are (1) seigniorage (the change in the monetary base), (2) Central Bank revenue (the...

The paper shows that civil war in Burundi in the 1990s has provoked an unprecedented decline in government revenue. Both foreign aid transfers and revenue from domestic sources dried up, inducing the government to rely more on inflation tax. Using quarterly data covering the period from 1980:1...

This paper shows firstly that the money-in-the-utility-function model presents exactly the same kind of limitations as the cash-in-advance model for characterizing explosive hyperinflation. These limitations relate to sufficient money essentiality in the sense of Scheinkman (1980). Thereby, this...

In developing countries, governments are tempted to, and they often do finance their budget deficits by issuing currency. This leads to inflation, and ultimately, the source of the incomes to the budget are the inflation tax and the seigniorage. The mechanism that is used is the direct loan,...