This groundbreaking book analyzes how the ecology of taxation is fundamental for the success or failure of tax systems. It specifically focuses on the role of the ecological environment on taxation; the factors that determine the ecology of taxation; and how the ecology of taxation has changed and may continue to evolve. The implicit, important conclusion is that there are no permanent or universal optimal tax theories: all theories are related to this ecology.
Browse by title
Fiscal Decentralization and Local Finance in Developing Countries
Development from Below
Roy Bahl and Richard M. Bird
This book draws on experiences in developing countries to bridge the gap between the conventional textbook treatment of fiscal decentralization and the actual practice of subnational government finance. The extensive literature about the theory and practice is surveyed and longstanding problems and new questions are addressed. It focuses on the key choices that must be made in decentralizing, on how economic and political factors shape the choices that countries make, and on how, by paying more attention to the need for a more comprehensive approach and the critical connections between different components of decentralization reform, everyone involved might get more for their money.
Global Developments in Public Infrastructure Procurement
Evaluating Public–Private Partnerships and Other Procurement Options
Darrin Grimsey and Mervyn K. Lewis
There is widespread acceptance of the importance of infrastructure, but less agreement about how it should be funded and procured. While most public infrastructure is still provided in-house or by traditional procurement methods – with well-researched strengths and weaknesses – the development of service concession arrangements has seen a greater emphasis on lifecycle costing, risk assessment and asset design as featured in a variety of public private partnership (PPP) delivery models. This book examines the various procurement approaches, and provides a framework for comparing their advantages and disadvantages. Drawing on international experience, it considers some of the best and worst examples of PPPs, and infrastructure projects generally, along with the lessons for improving infrastructure procurement processes.
Financial Underpinnings of Europe’s Financial Crisis
Liberalization, Integration, and Asymmetric State Power
Nina Eichacker
This book analyzes how financial liberalization affected the development of the financial crisis in Europe, with particular attention given to the ways in which power asymmetries within Western Europe facilitated financial liberalization and distributed the costs and gains from it. The author combines institutional narrative analysis with empirical surveys and econometrics, as well as country-level studies of financial liberalization and its consequences before and after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
Public Debt
An Illusion of Democratic Political Economy
Giuseppe Eusepi and Richard E. Wagner
Over the past decades, economists have witnessed with growing uneasiness their failure to explain the ballooning of public debt in most countries. This book provides an alternative orientation that explains why concepts of public debt that are relevant for authoritarian regimes are not relevant for democratic regimes. Using methodological individualism and micro-economics, this book overcomes flaws inherent in the standard macro approach, according to which governments manipulate public debt to promote systemic stability. This unique analysis is grounded in the writings of Antonio de Viti de Marco, injecting current analytical contributions and formulations into the framework to offer a forthright insight into public debt and political economy.
Financing Nonprofits and Other Social Enterprises
A Benefits Approach
Dennis R. Young
This book applies benefits theory to the financing of nonprofit and other social purpose organizations. Individual chapters are devoted to organizations primarily reliant on earned income, gifts, government support and investment income, respectively, as well as organizations that are highly diversified in their sources of operating support. The book is intended to guide managers and leaders towards finding the best mix of income sources for their organizations, to help educate future managers about resource development and to stimulate additional research on the financing of nonprofits and other forms of social enterprise.
The Political Economy of Public Debt
Three Centuries of Theory and Evidence
Richard M. Salsman
How have the most influential political economists of the past three centuries theorized about sovereign borrowing and shaped its now widespread use? That important question receives a comprehensive answer in this original work, featuring careful textual analysis and illuminating exhibits of public debt empirics since 1700. Beyond its value as a definitive, authoritative history of thought on public debt, this book rehabilitates and reintroduces a realist perspective into a contemporary debate now heavily dominated by pessimists and optimists alike.
Structuring Public–Private Research Partnerships for Success
Empowering University Partners
Gordon Rausser, Holly Amedon and Reid Stevens
As funding for universities and governmental research units has declined, these institutions have turned to the private sector to augment their research and development budgets. This book presents a framework for structuring public-private research partnerships that protect both these institutions’ academic freedom and the private firm’s corporate interests. This formulation is developed using insights originating from the incomplete contracting and collective decision making literatures. The book presents a number of template designs for a variety of research partnerships.