This paper summarizes the various methodologies for estimating marginal effective tax rates applying to investment decisions. The conceptual framework is developed for several types of investment decisions, including depreciable capital, inventories, and depletable assets. The analysis involves...

The authors review experiences with fiscal federalism in industrial countries and present a framework for a reform of fiscal systems in developing and transition economies. They indicate how the benefits of decentralized decisionmaking in a federal system can be achieved in a manner consistent...

This paper analyzes some of the problems that arise in decentralizing education to the private sector. We concentrate on the difficulties that result from heterogeneity among students and competition among schools in a locational setting. We analyze two main issues, the resources expended by...

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...

The paper estimates a life-cycle model of consumption, saving, and wealth accumulation from disaggregated time series data containing an explicit age dimension. Highly significant age effects indicate the importance of age disaggregated analysis. Interest elasticities of saving are considerably...

Using the Mirrlees optimal income tax model with a maxi-min social welfare function, we derive conditions for a decreasing marginal tax rate throughout the skill distribution, a strictly concave tax function in income and a single-peaked average tax schedule. With additive preferences and a...

Is there a theoretical basis for subsidizing employment in low-income regions? A two-region model is analyzed where there is migration of labour between regions, costs of migration, and unemployment in the low-income region. Workers migrate according to the expected wage net of the cost of...