Reducing tariffs and increasing consumption taxes is a standard IMF advice to countries that want to open up their economy without hurting government finances. Indeed, theoretical analysis of such a tariff-tax reform shows an unambiguous increase in welfare and government revenues. The present...

The study assesses the impact of the first package of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (or TRAIN), which includes an increase in petroleum and coal excise taxes, passed by Congress in 2017. The study also reviews the context of the energy sector in the country given that petroleum...

This paper introduces the concept of a steepest ascent tariff reform for a small open economy. By construction, it is locally optimal in that it yields the highest gain in utility of any feasible tariff reform vector of the same length. Accordingly, it provides a convenient benchmark for the...