This paper aims to establish and explore the links between two threads in the public finance literature. One is the use of tax thresholds to partition taxpayers into those who are liable to pay tax and those who are not. The other is the notion of ‘informality’ as a central challenge for tax...

This paper explores the role of trade instruments in globally efficient climate policies, focusing on whether or not some form of border tax adjustment (BTA) is warranted when carbon prices differ internationally. The analysis shows that, while there is no case for BTA when all instruments can...

With the public finances of many developing and emerging market countries still heavily dependent on trade tax revenues, further trade liberalization may be hindered unless they are able to develop alternative sources of revenue. Against a background of, and to inform, heightened theoretical...

This paper focuses on the implications of the economic crisis and recession of 2008–2009 for climate change and related policy responses. Stressing that even prolonged output losses make very little difference to appropriate emissions reduction objectives, the paper argues that a cautious...

Federal structures create the possibility of vertical tax externalities between levels of government, with the private sector's response to the tax policy decisions of one level affecting the tax base of the other. Such effects arise most obviously when both levels of government co-occupy the...

This article generalizes existing results on the effects of specific and ad valorem taxes on product quality in competitive markets. It is shown that the critical quantity on which these effects turn is the price elasticity of the marginal valuation of quality. Previous analyses, it emerges,...

There has been much discussion recently of structuring tax and transfer programs to ensure that resources go to the poor, with minimal leaks to the nonpoor. The poor have no incentive to earn income with 100 percent marginal tax rates, but how high or low the marginal rate of taxation should be,...

This chapter surveys the theory of international tax competition and coordination, which, matching the increasing policy importance of the topic, has grown substantially over the last 30. years. It focuses on the taxation of capital income, stressing that issues arise not only in relation to...