Against a backdrop of sluggish economic conditions and continued weak job creation, the investment plan proposed by the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker would provide a rapid economic stimulus that would foster Europe's competitiveness at the same time as boosting much-needed...

This book chronicles the rise and fall of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party's political strategy of using an off-budget financial mechanism--the Fiscal Investment Loan Program--to deliver the seemingly impossible: low taxes, high spending and balanced budgets.

Interest rates on government debt have fallen in many countries over the last several decades, with markets indicating that rates may stay low well into the future. It is by now well understood that sustained low interest rates can change the nature of long-run fiscal policy choices. In this...

This background paper describes five different tools that can be used for the assessment of tax incentives by governments in low income countries' (LICs). The first tool (an application of cost-benefit analysis) provides an overarching framework for assessment. Evaluations of the various costs...

This paper is an update of an earlier 2009 paper and analyzes the role of Tax Incentives in promoting investment, their effectiveness and their revenue and other costs and political economy. The paper consolidates econometric work on the topic done by the authors covering the Caribbean,...

The authors contend that in evaluating and designing investment incentives in developing economies, analysts should consider their effect on: the marginal effective tax rate (METR). Even simple tax incentives can perversely affect the METR. Many schemes have relatively generous write-offs to...