We argue five main propositions. Firstly, the choice between royalties and profit-based taxation involves an efficiency trade-off, between diminished incentives to produce output on one hand, and diminished incentives to minimize costs on the other (as in Laffont and Tirole 1993). So the Brown...

This paper presents an analytical framework for examining changes in the Private Health Insurance rebate (PHIR) and the Medicare Levy Surcharge (MLS), and uses it to establish three key propositions. First, increases in the MLS rate tend to reduce the elasticity of demand for private health...

The Australian Treasury contracted KPMG Econtech (2010) to estimate the efficiency cost of Australian taxes, using the MM900 Computable General Equilibrium model. The resultant report, endorsed by Treasury, was a major input into the Henry report into Australia's Future Tax System (AFTS) and...

Part IIIA of the Trade Practices Act provides a mechanism by which third party access can be mandated to facilities such as rail links. This paper examines what it is that Part IIIA might be doing from an economic perspective, and what that tells us about when mandated third party access might...

Time consistency refers to situations where a policy that is optimal ex ante proves not to be optimal ex post, creating the risk of opportunistic policy reversals. While the threat of such reversals has received widespread attention in the theoretical literature, testing whether policy is indeed...

Third party access regimes impose on an incumbent an obligation to provide third parties with access to designated services and facilities at regulated terms and conditions. This article examines the manner in which the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) has set the terms and...