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on Public Finance |
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Issue of 2005‒05‒23
three papers chosen by |
| By: | Lucy F. Ackert; Jorge Martinez-Vazquez; Mark Rider |
| Abstract: | This paper reports the results of experiments designed to examine whether a taste for fairness affects people’s preferred tax structure. Building on the Fehr and Schmidt (1999) model, we devise a simple test for the presence of social preferences in voting for alternative tax structures. The experimental results show that individuals demonstrate concern for their own payoff and inequality aversion in choosing among alternative tax structures. However, concern for redistribution decreases when it leads to increasing deadweight losses. Our findings have important implications for the design of optimal tax theory. |
| Date: | 2004 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedawp:2004-33&r=pub |
| By: | Tullio Jappelli (Università di Salerno, CSEF and CEPR) |
| Abstract: | The paper reviews some of the most important results of the Life Cycle Hypothesis for understanding individual and aggregate saving behaviour. It then turns to the implications for fiscal policy and social security, highlighting Modigliani’s seminal contributions. Over time competing theories have emerged, and some empirical findings are difficult to reconcile with LCH; chiefly aspects of inertia, myopia, and irrational behaviour documented by the recent behavioural literature. But the LCH is still the benchmark model to think about individual saving decisions, the aggregate evidence and policy issues. |
| Date: | 2005–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sef:csefwp:140&r=pub |
| By: | Robert Tannenwald |
| Abstract: | In debating Massachusetts business tax policy, protagonists have cited many different indicators purporting to assess the fairness, adequacy, and competitiveness of the Commonwealth’s business taxes. These statistics actually reveal very little about the degree to which Massachusetts business taxes achieve these widely accepted tax policy goals. The author explains why these indicators are misleading and presents new indicators of business tax competitiveness that, although imperfect, are more accurate than those most widely quoted. The article concludes that the fairness of Massachusetts business taxes is unclear and that the Commonwealth’s corporate income taxes are inadequate. The clearest conclusion drawn is that Massachusetts business taxes do not harm its competitive standing. |
| Keywords: | Business tax - Massachusetts |
| Date: | 2004 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedbpp:04-4&r=pub |