Tax avoidance and evasion are pervasive in all countries, and tax structures are undoubtedly skewed by this reality. Standard models of taxation and their conclusions must reflect these realities.This paper first presents theoretical models that integrate avoidance and evasion into the overall...

This chapter reviews the theory and evidence regarding the impact of taxation on corporate financial policy. Starting from a basic characterization of the classical corporate income tax and its effects, the analysis focuses on three areas of research: equity policy, debt-equity decisions, and...

In this survey, I summarize and evaluate the extant literature concerning taxation and personal saving. I describe the theoretical models that economists have used to depict saving decisions, and I explore the positive and normative implications of these models. The central positive question is...

This chapter summarizes the current state of research on how taxation affects household decisions with respect to portfolio structure and asset trading. It discusses long-standing issues, such as the impact of differential taxation of income flows from stocks and bonds on the incentives for...

This chapter examines government policy alternatives for protecting the environment. We compare environmentally motivated taxes and various non-tax environmental policy instruments in terms of their efficiency and distributional impacts. Much of the analysis is performed in a second-best setting...

Observed fiscal policy varies greatly across time and countries. How can we explain this variation? This paper surveys the recent literature that has tried to answer this question. We adopt a unified approach in portraying public policy as the equilibrium outcome of an explicitly specified...

This is a survey of economic analysis of law, that is, of the emerging field under which the standard tools of microeconomics are employed to identify the effects of legal rules and their social desirability. Five basic subject areas are covered. The first is legal liability for harm. Here we...

This chapter analyzes the distortions created by taxation and the features of tax systems that minimize such distortions (subject to achieving other government objectives). It starts with a review of the theory and practice of deadweight loss measurement, followed by characterizations of optimal...

In this survey, we review research on tax policy and business investment with four objectives. First, we use a simple prototypical dynamic neoclassical investment model to derive and explain effects of taxation on business investment in the long run and short run. Second, we describe and...