This paper presents a survey of the optimal commodity taxation theory and, particularly, deals with the issue of uniformity versus selectivity of commodity tax rates. A review of the main empirical models is also presented. Moreover, the study attempts to calculate the optimal commodity taxes...

Commodity taxes play an important role in Brazil and raise around 60% of the total tax revenue. This heavy reliance renders commodity taxation one of the main tools available to the government for collecting revenue and securing redistribution. In fact, Brazilian income inequity is one of the...

Commodity taxes play an important role in Brazil and raise around 60% of the total tax revenue. This heavy reliance renders commodity taxation one of the main tools available to the government for collecting revenue and securing redistribution. In fact, Brazilian income inequity is one of the...

We evaluate the effects of a large-scale enforcement intervention on formal labor flows. The initiative combined a communication component (an official letter/e-mail sent to registered employers) and a punishment component (face-to-face inspections). Using two identification strategies...

We offer a decomposition for the variance of the current unemployment rate that not only measures the contributions of labor market flows but also of the approximation error embedded in other decompositions that use surrogates for the current rate. Using data for the United States and Brazil,...

This article analyses the effect of labor turnover on the productivity of Brazilian manufacturing firms between 1996 and 2013. We based our analysis on a theory of learning by doing, where turnover harms productivity by restricting the efficiency gains achieved by workers when they accumulate...