We use detailed micro-level data on consumption and income for a 1998-2004 panel of Russian households to study the effects of the flat income tax reform in 2001. We show that the gap between household expenditures and reported income is a meaningful measure of tax evasion. We use the...

The first goal of this paper is to develop a taxonomy of decentralization measures showing their relationship to the primary theoretical aspects of decentralization and how the different measures are related to each other. The second goal of the paper is to argue convincingly that from an...

The last two decades have witnessed a great deal of effort devoted to measuring the private output elasticity of public capital, but remarkably little consensus has emerged. This paper estimates the meta-output elasticity of public capital and explains the heterogeneity of primary estimates...

Overall, I find strong support for the claim that the quality of government services and the level of corruption matter mightily. Clearly, other factors also matter, including the size and ownership of the firm, the fairness of the legal system, the level of competition, the tax rate, the...

It is hard for tax administrations to levy and collect taxes anywhere and anytime. However, taxing certain kinds of activities, sectors, or individuals – the so-called “informal sector” – is an additional challenge for tax administrations in both developing and developed countries, and...

In this paper, we compare the economic effects of such an approach to tax reform, relative to the enactment of a pure consumption tax such as the Hall and Rabushka (1983, 1995) Flat Tax. For the former approach, we analyze a stylized version of the GIT, which provides for consumption tax...

This Paper looks at the processes of trying to decentralize government since the wars stopped, and points to significant differences in the results thus far. It asks why the differences exist and what lessons can be learnt by the International community on how best to assist nations wishing to...

Tax compliance has been studied in traditional public economics by heavily relying on deterrence as the most important compliance-increasing factor. This model of tax evasion is however challenged by inconclusive empirical evidence also pointing to the importance of tax morale as the...

In this paper, we critically review the Cambodian decentralization process to date. The next two sections set the stage by respectively providing a brief overview of Cambodia’s economic, social, historical and political context and an outline of the basic organizational structure of...

The structure of the paper is the following: the next section surveys different forms of presumptive taxes, the third section illustrates the kind of presumptive taxes that existed in Israel, relying on a rare publication in which tax authorities published methods to determine how reasonable the...