The development of the welfare state in the decades following the Great Depression coincided with a puzzling pattern in the taxation of top incomes. Effective tax rates at the top increased sharply but then gradually decreased, even as social transfers continued rising. We argue that this was...

The paper shows how a tax holiday may signal to a skeptical capital market that the future level of taxation will be moderate. After the signal has informed investors that the host country government is a low spender, the tax profile flattens out, corresponding to a tax reform stage. Contrary to...

In this paper we examine the optimal taxation of corporate profits in a multi-period limit pricing model where a dominant firm faces expansion by a competitive fringe. The optimal policy requires tax rates to vary both intertemporally and across firm sizes, and balances the benefit of fringe...

We extend the theoretical model of Rees and Shah (1986) to incorporate the effects of marginal tax rate progression and income transfers, as arguments in the individual's utility choice model between self-employment and paid- employment. Measures of the degree of progressivity in the tax and...

This paper provides a new explanation for "tax holidays," as well as their subsequent removal in a tax reform stage. In a two-period model, I assume that perfectly competitive foreign investors are uncertain about the host country government's propensity for public spending, and that infinitely...

In this paper, the authors examine the economics of crime deterrence from an evolutionary perspective. A bimatrix game is used to model the interaction between populations of property owners and (potential) criminals, given exogenous levels of public policing and criminal sanctions. A crucial...