Indonesia is currently facing some severe challenges, both in political affairs and in economic management. One of these challenges is the recently enacted decentralization program, now well underway, which promises to have some wide-ranging consequences. This edited volume presents original...

The traditional theory of public finance has made a strong case for a major role for fiscal decentralization. This case is based on an improved allocation of resources in the public sector. And it has four basic elements. First, regional or local governments are in a position to adapt outputs of...

This paper is the Presidential Address to the Sixteenth Annual Convention of the Eastern Economic Association. It offers some reflections on the role that economics has, and can, play in the determination of environmental policy. These reflections address the choice of policy instruments for...

This paper explores the role for economic instruments in the control of global warming. It begins with a review of what theory and practice have taught us about these instruments--pollution taxes and systems of transferable permits--in the pursuit of domestic environmental management. It then...

The window tax provides a dramatic and transparent historical example of the potential distorting effects of taxation. Imposed in England in 1696, the tax—a kind of predecessor of the modern property tax—was levied on dwellings with the tax liability based on the number of windows. The tax...