Argentina was a pioneer of infrastructure reform in the early 1990s. The social dimension of infrastructure services was typically overlooked in the reform process. However, social sensitivities often resurfaced in the years that followed, leading to a series of ad hoc social policy measures...

The authors estimate social rates of return to electricity-generating capacity and paved roads, relative to the return on general capital, by examining the effect on aggregate output and comparing that effect with the costs of construction. They find that both types of infrastructure capital are...

The authors present a model that links heterogeneity of preferences across ethnic groups in a city to the amount and type of public good the city supplies. Results show that the shares of spending on productive public goods - education, roads, sewers, and trash pickup _ in U.S. cities (metro...

The authors provide an empirical evaluation of the impact of infrastructure development on economic growth and income distribution using a large panel data set encompassing over 100 countries and spanning the years 1960-2000. The empirical strategy involves the estimation of simple equations for...

Governments in developing countries are continuously searching for new and improved tax bases. Existing methods of taxation in these countries frequently fall short of meeting acceptable criteria of efficiency, equity and administrative ease. This paper argues that there is a compelling fiscal...

This paper specifies a microeconomic model to estimate the impact of investment in public infrastructure on private industrial profitability. Empirical results based on time series data for 34 industries characterize the Mexican industrial structure as having involuntary unemployment, deficient...

Using the 1992 Bulgarian household budget survey, the authors analyze the distribution of income and of the income tax burden by income and expenditure class and by rural-urban sector. They find: 1) Low income inequality (although that is changing rapidly). 2) A progressive income tax system....

The fact that raising taxes can increase taxed labor supply through income effects is frequently used to justify much lower measures of the marginal welfare cost of taxes and greater public good provision than indicated by traditional, compensated analyses. The authors confirm that this...

Using an economy-wide conceptual framework, the author analyzes how land registration affects financial development and economic growth in Thailand. He uses contemporary techniques, such as error correction and co-integration, to deal with such problems as time-series data not being stationary....

One of the central predictions of growth theory, old and new, is that income taxes have a negative effect on the pace of economic expansion. Little empirical work has been done on the topic because of the difficulty of measuring the relevant marginal tax rates. Easterly and Rebelo experiment...