"It is now widely acknowledged that history is useful, even essential, because it helps us predict the future. The history of ideas in economics, as in other fields of inquiry, plays an important role in enlightening current researchers as they endeavour to understand contemporary events and...

This paper reviews the existing evidence on the effects of tax reforms on output levels and growth over the short and long run from different strands of the literature. It develops and applies criteria to evaluate the usefulness of ex-post estimates to predict the effects of tax reforms ex-ante....