The paper analyses the revenue-raising, distributional and incentive effects of the personal tax system in Hungary from the start of the transitional tax reforms of 1988, and develops methods for estimating marginal indirect taxes. It evaluates the distributional impact of revenue-neutral...

This paper combines income tax returns with Flow of Funds data to estimate the distribution of household wealth in the United States since 1913. We estimate wealth by capitalizing the incomes reported by individual taxpayers, accounting for assets that do not generate taxable income. We...

We develop a framework for optimal taxation when agents can earn their income both in traditional activities, where private and social products coincide, and in rent-seeking activities, where private returns exceed social returns either because they involve the capture of pre-existing rents or...

We develop a model of common agency with complete information and general preferences with non-transferable utility, and prove that the principals’ Nash equilibrium in truthful strategies implements an efficient action. We apply this theory to construct a positive model of public finance,...

This paper analyses the changes to the tax and social security systems that have occurred since Czechoslovakia's `velvet revolution' in 1989. It shows how the tax system is moving to meet the requirements of a market economy. It suggests that a particularly high priority has to be given to...

The incidence of taxation and the design of an optimal tax system have been extensively discussed in the public finance literature but mainly within a competitive market setting or within a homogenous good (Cournot type) oligopoly. In a differentiated product oligopoly, the effect of taxation...

This paper uses a new economic geography model to analyze tax competition between two countries trying to attract internationally mobile capital. Each government may levy a source tax on capital and a lump sum tax on fixed labor. If industry is concentrated in one of the countries, the analysis...

This paper surveys the recent literature on the theory of macroeconomic policy. We study the effect of various incentive constraints on the policy-making process, such as lack of credibility, political opportunism, political ideology, and divided government. The survey is organized in three...

This paper provides factual evidence on the extent of public intervention in the Italian economy. It further illustrates the internal contradictions and weaknesses of public action in Italy. New policy proposals to solve old structural problems of the Bel Paese are then discussed. Among them, a...

Local merchant guilds were ubiquitous in medieval Europe, and their development was inextricably linked with the development of towns and the rise of the merchant class. We develop a theory of the emergence of local merchant guilds as an efficient mechanism to implement collusion among merchants...