Starting with Vickrey (1945) and Mirrlees (1971), the optimal tax literature has studied the design of a personal income tax. The assumed ideal would be to tax earnings ability. Earnings ability is unobservable for tax purposes, however. Past papers have focused instead on designing a tax on...

The paper tries to provide an overview of the fiscal pressures on Eastern European governments during the transition from centrally planned to market economies, and what responses might be called for. In each case it is started by describing the conventional wisdom concerning how best to deal...

Starting with Vickrey (1945) and Mirrlees (1971), the optimal tax literature has studied the design of a personal income tax. The assumed ideal would be to tax earnings ability. Earnings ability is unobservable for tax purposes, however. Past papers have focused instead on designing a tax on...

Under cash-flow taxation, a country can tax the cash flow of domestic producers, domestic residents, or domestic citizens. The implications are different in each case. The paper examines the positive and normative effects of various versions of a cash-flow tax, focusing on the effects of such a...

Tax policies seen in developing countries are puzzling on many dimensions. To begin with, revenue/GDP is surprisingly small compared with that in developed economies. Taxes on labor income play a minor role. Taxes on consumption are important, but effective tax rates vary dramatically by firm,...

The integration of world capital markets carries important implications for the design and impact of tax policies. This paper evaluates research findings on international taxation, drawing attention to connections and inconsistencies between theoretical and empirical observations. Diamond and...