The traditional view of tax holds that consumption taxes fail to tax the yield to capital, whereas income taxes do, leading to John Stuart Mill's criticism of the income tax as a "double tax" on wealth that is saved. A better analytic understanding illustrates that there are two types of...

A large telephone survey conducted after the attacks of September 11 suggests that the willingness to tolerate discrimination varies significantly across domains, with a very high tolerance of discrimination against poorly educated immigrants and a strikingly low tolerance of discrimination...

Hybrid income-consumption taxes seek to tax some but not all savings, the treatment of savings being the principal difference between an income and a consumption tax. Some hybrids, however, simply move the tax system towards a prepaid consumption or wage tax; others, by allowing arbitrage, risk...

The strategy of "starving the beast" involves cutting taxes today with the expectation that spending cuts will follow tomorrow. Various heuristics and biases help to explain the likely effects of the strategy. In four experiments conducted on the World Wide Web, subjects chose general levels of...

Ever since Mancur Olson's 1965 classic The Logic of Collective Action was published, the dominant view of politics in the academy and the popular understanding has featured the special interest model. Small groups with high stakes in legislative outcomes solve their coordination and free-rider...

Behavioral economics and cognitive psychology have demonstrated that people deviate from ideal precepts of rationality in many settings, showing inconsistent judgment in the face of framing and other formal manipulations of the presentation of problems. This article summarizes the finding of...

The traditional understanding of broad-based tax systems contrasts an income tax with all forms of a consumption tax. The income tax, alone, includes the yield to capital in its base; consumption taxes do not. Simple financial analysis demonstrates the equivalence of the two most common classes...

Research has shown that people vary widely in their support or opposition to progressive taxation. We argue here that the perception of progressiveness itself is affected by the nature of the tax system and by the way it is framed, or presented. Experiments conducted over the World-Wide Web and...

The principal findings of behavioral economics and cognitive psychology over the past several decades have been to show that human beings deviate from ideal precepts of rationality in many settings, showing inconsistent judgment in the face of framing and other formal manipulations of the...

The traditional understanding of broad-based tax systems contrasts an income tax with all forms of a consumption tax. The income tax, alone, includes the yield to capital in its base; consumption taxes do not. Simple financial analysis demonstrates the equivalence of the two most common classes...