Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Conceptual Foundations of the MCF -- 3 The MCF for Commodity Taxes -- 4 The MCFs for Excise Taxes in Thailand and the United Kingdom -- 5 The MCF from Taxing Labor Income -- 6 Applications of the MCF from Taxing Labor Income -- 7 The MCF from...

We develop a political economy model of intergovernmental transfers. Vertical fiscal balance occurs in a federation when the ratio of the marginal benefit of the public services provided by the federal and provincial governments is equal to their relative marginal costs of production. With...

We test the hypothesis that the flypaper effect can arise if the recipient government finances part of its expenditures with a distortionary tax. We present a simple theoretical framework that shows how a lump-sum transfer stimulates the marginal expenditures of a recipient government through an...

The authors extend the Ahmad and Stern (1984) framework for calculating the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) for excise taxes in Thailand by incorporating non-tax distortions caused by (a) environmental externalities, (b) public expenditure externalities, (c) market power in setting prices,...

Concerns have been expressed that, in an era of high capital mobility, international tax competition will lead to an inexorable decline in taxes levied on capital, shifting the tax burden to the relative immobile inputs, labour, and land. Some view this as a threat to the financial and political...

Equalisation grants can affect a state's fiscal behaviour because its tax policies can affect the size of its grant. For a large state, an increase in its tax rate will increase the standard tax rate used to calculate the grant for that base and thereby reduce (increase) the state's grant if it...

We test the hypothesis that the flypaper effect can arise if the recipient government finances part of its expenditures with a distortionary tax. We present a simple theoretical framework that shows how a lump-sum transfer stimulates the marginal expenditures of a recipient government through an...

The marginal cost of public funds (MCF) measures the loss incurred by society in raising additional revenues to finance government spending. The MCF has emerged as one of the most important concepts in public economics; it is a key component in evaluations of tax reforms, public expenditure...

An optimal tax system equates the marginal cost of public funds across all tax bases. This idea is applied to a federation to derive the optimal unconditional transfers that will promote an optimal allocation of taxation and expenditures among the governments in the federation. This approach...