Tax reforms over the past twenty-five years in the United States have dramatically altered the income tax system with numerous changes in base definitions and tax rates. With all of the changes that have taken place, including the most recent tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, interest in the effect of...

This paper presents a model of the strategic pricing behavior of Chinese cities as they determine how much land to lease and what prices to charge for the land leases. They effectively sell the land asset at a price that may or may not reflect its market value, and in so doing they buy a flow of...

Post-Soviet economies are plagued by a public-sector practice whereby the Ministry of Finance cancels tax liabilities that enterprises owe it in exchange for debts the Ministry owes enterprises. While the practice seems innocuous enough to its practitioners, it has multiple distorting effects....

We analyze the spread of use-value assessment (UVA) programs applied to agricultural and rural land for property tax purposes across the 50 states. Taxing such land on the basis of its current use in agriculture rather than its full market value can confer significant property tax reductions on...

In this paper I examine the determinants of the user cost of housing, including house price inflation expectations and tax policy. I derive estimates of the user cost of housing for several U.S. metropolitan areas over the period 1995-2008 and I decompose those estimates into user cost component...

Business operations in transition countries are subject to numerous obstacles. This study uses enterprise-level data collected by the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to analyze which potential obstacles are the greatest impediments and how firm and/or...

Misallocation of land resources can be a substantial hindrance to economic development in a developing or transition economy. If access to land resources is limited by the government or if the ability to gain appropriate permits to use the land is subject to delays, required bribes, or...

This study presents an empirical analysis of individual expressions of confidence in the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) using the World Values Survey-Wave 7 data. The main hypothesis tested is that confidence in each institution is positively associated with alignment...

Explains the origins, key features, and implementation of use-value assessment (UVA) programs in property taxation in the United States during the last half-century. Intended audience consists of academics who study public finance, agricultural and land economics, urban economics and regional...