Whether the U.S. government should be allowed to claim credit for the private philanthropy of its citizens is a hot topic in today's foreign aid debate. Overlooked in this debate, however, is a form of aid that straddles the traditional public/private divide: charitable tax expenditures. Through...

Over the last half decade, a variety of federal legislative proposals for limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been put forward, most of which would set a price on carbon. As of early 2013, the one politically plausible policy appears to be a carbon tax, passed as part of a larger fiscal...

This is a companion piece to an article that carefully analyzes tuition tax credit scholarship programs now popular around the country. This article offers a model statute for states considering or improving such programs that addresses concerns raised in my previous article. The companion...

Proponents of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) set forth two primary goals: (1) to constrain health care costs and (2) to expand health insurance coverage. In its June 28, 2012 decision upholding the constitutionality of the ACA, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively...

This manuscript summarizes key provisions of the so-called "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" affecting United States individuals, small businesses, estates, and trusts. It does not cover changes made to pension and retirement accounts, provisions applicable only to certain industries, rules applicable to...

We investigate the effects of fiscal policy surprises for US data, using vector autoregressions. We overcome the difficulties that changes in fiscal policy may manifest themselves in variables other than fiscal variables first and that fiscal variables may respond "automatically" to business...

The optimal taxation level and tax structure depend on numerous factors and enormously differ from country to country. However, the two mentioned tax policy instruments could ensure economic recovery and sustainable economic growth. This article aims to examine the effects of tax policy on...

This study constructs a general CGE model for value-added tax (VAT). From limited publicly available VAT data, the model is capable of estimating all VAT statistics at the detailed sectoral level, including estimates of Output VAT, Input VAT, Net VAT, and VAT Refunds to each intermediate input,...

The primary reason for the existence of commodity derivatives market is to offer instruments for price discovery and risk management. Imposition of CTT on futures trading in non-agriculture commodities has allegedly disturbed the Indian commodity market from carrying out its function price...

In this paper we evaluate the incidence of a large cut in the value-added tax (VAT) for French sit-down restaurants. In contrast to previous studies that focus on prices only, we estimate its effect on four groups: workers, firm owners, consumers and suppliers of material goods. Using a...