This paper explores the implications of a distinctive feature of the value added tax (VAT) that is stressed by practitioners but essentially ignored by theorists: that it functions, in part, as a tax on the purchases of informal operators from formal sector businesses and, not least, on their...

Incomplete information is a commitment device for time consistency problems. In the context of time consistent labor income taxation privacy can lead to a Pareto superior outcome and increases the effectiveness of public education as a second best policy.

Incomplete information is a commitment device for time consistency problems. In the context of time consistent labor income taxation privacy can lead to a Pareto superior outcome and increases the effectiveness of public education as a second best policy.

The importance and complexity of petroleum and hard minerals operations is matched by the importance and complexity of finding effective ways to tax them. Many of these challenges arise in other activities too (exhaustibility of deposits being the main exception), but they take such extreme form...