Does the Chilean government smooth taxes? This paper argues that the answer is yes, but only if one takes into account royalties from copper. During the past ten years there has been a serious debate in Chile initially regarding the sustainability of the Chilean government's fiscal deficit and...

This paper analyzes optimal spending, tax and financial policies in models of endogenous growth where public spending is productive. We extend previous work in four directions. First, we analyze optimal policies when the government is allowed to borrow and lend, rather than being restricted to...

This paper tests Barro's (1979) tax-smoothing hypothesis using Swedish central government data for the period 1952-1999. According to the tax-smoothing hypothesis, the government sets the budget surplus equal to expected changes in government expenditure. When expenditure is expected to...

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...

This paper addresses transboundary environmental problems in the context of an optimal tax problem, when part of the labor force is mobile across countries. The policy instruments include both commodity taxation and nonlinear income taxation. We show how the tax policy in a noncooperative...

Tax evasion is modeled as a risky activity and integrated into a standard problem of optimal tax design. It is shown that there is a trade off between reducing tax evasion and reducing tax distortion. Thus it is efficient to supplement a broad-based wage tax by a tax on specific consumption if...