In the modern world, access-limiting fortification walls are not typically regarded as promoting democracy. But in Greek antiquity, increased investment in fortifications was correlated with the prevalence and stability of democracy. This paper sketches the background conditions of the Greek city-state ecology, analyzes a passage in Aristotle’s Politics, and assesses the choices of Hellenistic kings, Greek citizens, and urban elites, as modeled in a simple game. The paper explains how city walls promoted democracy and helps to explain several other puzzles: why Hellenistic kings taxed Greek cities at lower than expected rates; why elites in Greek cities supported democracy; and why elites were not more heavily taxed by democratic majorities. The relationship between walls, democracy, and taxes promoted continued economic growth into the late classical and Hellenistic period (4th-2nd centuries BCE), and ultimately contributed to the survival of Greek culture into the Roman era, and thus modernity. We conclude with a consideration of whether the walls-democracy relationship holds in modernity.
Keywords: Democracy, Ancient Greece, Athens, Walls and Democracy, Taxation, War

Theoretical work on taxation and state-building borrows heavily from early modern European experience. While a number of European states increased centralized tax revenues during this period, for others revenues stagnated or even declined and these variations have motivated alternative arguments for the determinants of fiscal and state capacity. This study reviews the arguments concerning the three determinants that have received most attention, namely warfare, economic structure, and political regime, and tests them by making use of a new and comprehensive tax revenue dataset. Our main finding is that these three determinants worked in interaction with each other. Specifically, when under pressure of war, it was representative regimes in more urbanized-commercial economies and authoritarian regimes in more rural-agrarian economies that tended to better aggregate domestic interests towards state-building. - Downloaded via iphone

What determines when states adopt war taxes to finance the cost of conflict? We address this question with a study of war taxes in the United States between 1789 and 2010. Using logit estimation of the determinants of war taxes, an analysis of roll-call votes on war tax legislation, and a historical case study of the Civil War, we provide evidence that partisan fiscal differences account whether the United States finances its conflicts through war taxes or opts for alternatives such as borrowing or expanding the money supply. Because the fiscal policies implemented to raise the revenues for war have considerable and often enduring redistributive impacts, war finance—in particular, war taxation—becomes a high-stakes political opportunity to advance the fiscal interests of core constituencies. Insofar as the alternatives to taxation shroud the actual costs of war, the findings have important implications for democratic accountability and the conduct of conflict. - Downloaded via iphone

By: Leonard E. Burman, William G. Gale, Sarah Gault, Bryan Kim, Jim Nunns and Steve Rosenthal -- In response to the financial market crisis and Great Recession, there has been a resurgence of interest in financial transaction taxes (FTTs) around the world. We estimate that a well-designed FTT could raise about $50 billion per year in the United States and would be quite progressive. We discuss the effects of an FTT on various dimensions of financial sector behavior and its ambiguous effects on economic efficiency. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Some observers believe that demand for housing in China is price-insensitive for cultural reasons. Among other things, housing is viewed as a “status good” for those wishing to get married. Another favorable factor is the preparedness of Chinese policymakers to intervene and support housing markets should they soften. Then there is the possibility that central bank policy will be adjusted in a manner designed to further support real estate lending. Yet, there remain grounds for skepticism. The role of big-city home ownership as a status good in Japan did not prevent the massive and destructive land and housing price boom and bust in the 1980s. And, government actions to support China’s housing prices will be fighting an uphill battle if private expectations of capital gains weaken. Not only that, but the day may come when China sees the need to implement a tax on property, if only to provide a better underpinning for municipal finances. This would almost surely drive prices down quickly. Finally, the government’s other objectives of liberalizing the financial system (as a step toward internationalizing the renminbi) and increasing housing supply to meet the needs of a migrating population may prove incompatible with supporting high house price-to-rent ratios. -- really fine update on what's been happening in urbanization, local governments, policies re financial sector liberalization, GNP and personal income growth (and slow down) etc -- copied to Pocket

Dan Bogart, Department of Economics, UC Irvine - : “There Can Be No Partnership with the King”: Regulatory Commitment and the Tortured Rise of England’s East Indian Merchant Empire: “The English East India Company helped build Britain’s colonial empire, but the Company was not a leader in East Asian trade for nearly a century after its founding in 1600. This paper argues that its early performance was hindered by a problem of regulatory commitment. It gives a brief history of the torturous renegotiations over its monopoly trading privileges and the fiscal demands by the monarchy. It also analyzes the effects of political instability, warfare, and fiscal capacity on the Company’s investment in shipping tonnage. Regressions show the growth of shipping tonnage declined significantly when there were changes in government ministers, when Britain was at war in Europe and North America, and when shipping capacity exceeded central government tax revenues. The findings point to the significance of regulatory institutions in Britain’s development and its links with politics and war. They also provide an important case where regulatory uncertainty lowers investment.” paper dated Jan 2015 -- downloaded pdf to Note

Department of History, School of Humanities, University of Dundee -- Books reviewed: (1) Marc A. Hight ed., The Correspondence of George Berkeley (Cambridge University Press, 2013), (2) Scott Breuninger , Recovering Bishop Berkeley: Virtue and Society in the Anglo-Irish Context (Palgrave, 2010), (3) Daniel Carey and Christopher J. Finlay , eds., The Empire of Credit: The Financial Revolution and the British Atlantic World, 1688–1815 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011) -- 18thC Irish intellectual history has enjoyed a revival in recent years. New scholarly resources, such as the Hoppen edition of the papers of the Dublin Philosophical Society and the recently published Berkeley correspondence, have been fundamental to that revival. Since 1986 the journal Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr has sponsored a complex conversation on the meaning and legacy of the 18thC in Irish history. Work in the journal and beyond deploying “New British” and Atlantic histories, as well as continuing attention to Europe, has helped to enrich scholarly understanding of the environments in which Irish people thought and acted. The challenge facing historians of Ireland has been to find categories of analysis that could comprehend religious division and acknowledge the centrality of the confessional state without reducing all Irish experience to sectarian conflict. Clearly the thought of the Irish Catholic community could not be approached without an understanding of the life of the Continental Catholic Church. Archivium Hibernicum has been collecting and publishing the traces of that history for a hundred years and new digital resources such as the Irish in Europe database have extended that work in new directions. The Atlantic and “New British” contexts have been more proximately important for the Protestant intellectual tradition. -- paywall

The tax code strongly favors income from capital gains — increases in the value of assets, such as stocks — over income from wages and salaries. These preferences are economically inefficient: they promote tax schemes that convert ordinary income into capital gains and encourage people to hold assets just to escape tax, even if they have better investment opportunities. They are also highly regressive, since capital gains are heavily concentrated at the top of the income scale. The President has proposed to make the tax code more efficient and equitable by reducing one of the biggest subsidies for capital gains (a preferential rate compared to wage and salary income) and largely eliminating another (the ability to avoid capital gains tax completely by holding on to an asset until death). These changes would allow investments to flow to where they are most productive and reduce investment in creating tax avoidance schemes instead of in real economic activity, among other economic benefits. And, because the benefits of the current preferences for capital gains flow overwhelmingly to the top, fully 99 percent of the revenue from the President’s capital gains proposals would come from the top 1 percent of filers, the Treasury Department estimates. -- 7 page report downloaded as pdf to Note

Pre Obama proposal to reverse part of Bush tax cuts - Berkeley economist Danny Yagan’s fantastic new paper, “Capital Tax Reform and the Real Economy: The Effects of the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut” -- He uses a large amount of IRS data on corporate tax returns to compare S-corporations with C-corporations. C-corps are publicly-traded, S-corps are closely held without institutional investors. But they are largely comparable in the range Yagan looks at (between $1 million and $1 billion dollars in size), as they are competing in the same industries and locations. -- S-corps don’t pay a dividend tax and thus didn’t benefit from the big 2003 dividend tax cut, while C-corps do pay them and did benefit. So that allows Yagan to set up S-corps as a control group and see what the effect of the massive dividend tax cut on C-corporations has been. -- [Yagan finds no difference in things we want to encourage] -- The one thing that does increase for C-corps of course, is the disgorgement of cash to shareholders -- an increase in dividends and share buybacks. This shows that these corps are responding to the tax cut; they just happen to be decisions that benefit, well, probably not you. If right now you are worried that too much cash is leaving firms to benefit a handful of investors while the real economy stagnates, suddenly Clinton-era levels of dividend taxation don’t look so bad. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Allegations of tax-avoiding transfer pricing by multinational firms are common, but economic evidence is scarce. This column discusses detailed price data for intra-firm and arm’s length transactions that reveals tax-driven transfer pricing, and suggests that it may be reduced by focusing on a small number of large firms in a small number of tax havens.

The recent actions of the US Treasury to rein in corporate tax inversions leave their rationale largely intact. This column discusses new evidence suggesting that the potential tax benefits of inversions are still huge. The recent Treasury measures raised legal obstacles, but the heart of the problem remains unaddressed. At some point a new technique is likely to be found to circumvent the new measures – just as happened with earlier measures. This is a worldwide problem.

...a new CEPR report analysing key aspects of cross-border European banking. (..) policy reforms in micro- and macro-prudential regulation and macroeconomic policies are urgently needed for Europe to improve its efficiency and reduce its risk. -- compared to previous experiences, cross-border banking itself played a relatively positive role during the crisis – especially for countries in C & E Europe that rely heavily on foreign banks. Rather, the crisis has been exacerbated by an inadequate response of regulators (..)a misalignment of regulatory incentives and a lack of an appropriate resolution framework on both national and supra-national level. -- we study whether cross-border banking flows in the EU create risk concentrations that may amplify financial vulnerabilities. ... it is key to evaluate this issue not only at the level of the individual countries, but also at the EU-level. (..) we find that the structure of the large banking centres in the EU tends to be well balanced. C & E European countries are highly dependent on a few W European banks, and the Nordic and Baltic (is) interwoven without much diversification. At the system-level, the EU – in contrast to other regions – is poorly diversified (plus) overexposure to the US. (..) [given need to manage systemic risks in setting macro policy] requires a partial reversal from strict inflation targeting (..) even though financial stability is an important prerequisite for effective monetary policy. (..) One such risk [that cross-border banks are prone to is] that in times of crisis, the prices of assets may no longer reflect fundamental values (especially under) mark-to-market accounting. (..) (our recommendations focus) on solutions at the European – rather than the national – level. (..)the only real alternative to this is to require cross-border banks to organise themselves as a string of national stand-alone subsidiaries, which foregoes the significant benefits of having a single market in the EU. -- downloaded pdf to Note

This CEPR report argues that policy reforms in micro- and macro-prudential regulation and macroeconomic policies are needed for Europe to reap the important diversification and efficiency benefits from cross-border banking, while reducing the risks stemming from large cross-border banks. Among the wishlist is removing tax preferences for debt over equity. -- see related VoxEU bookmark to executive summary as a VoxEU article -- downloaded pdf to Note

The BEPS Project aims to provide governments with clear international solutions for fighting corporate tax planning strategies that exploit gaps and loopholes of the current system to artificially shift profits to locations where they are subject to more favourable tax treatment. The OECD work is based on a BEPS Action Plan endorsed by the G20 in July 2013, which identified 15 key areas to be addressed by 2015; with 7 actions to be delivered in September 2014. This Explanatory Statement provides an overview of the seven BEPS reports delivered in 2014, which were arrived at through consensus of 44 countries on an equal footing (including all OECD members, OECD accession countries, and G20 countries) and extensive consultation of developing countries, business, NGOs and other stakeholders. It describes the context for the BEPS project and outlines the process for the work to date. It also describes the status of the 2014 reports in the context of the overall BEPS project, including remaining technical issues and potential interaction with the remaining BEPS work. Finally, it outlines the next steps for the BEPS work. -- downloaded pdf to Note

The OECD Network on Fiscal Relations across Levels of Government provides analysis and statistical underpinnings on the relationship between central and subcentral government, and its impact on efficiency, equity and macroeconomic stability. -- Main page for reports, white papers, guides, articles, links to OECD databases

An International Perspective on VAT -- by Alain Charlet and Jeffrey Owens -- Tax Notes International, Vol 59, No. 12, pp 943-54 -- September 20, 2010 -- Downloaded pdf from OECD > Centre for Tax Polic...

The OECD's Committee on Fiscal Affairs consults with business and other interested parties through a variety of means to inform its work in the tax area. One important way of obtaining such input is through the release of papers or discussion drafts for public comment. Below is a list of past discussion drafts for comments: -- list with links to papers and comments regularly updated

24/10/2014 - The OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project and the move to automatic exchange of financial account information took centre stage when Heads of Tax Administration met on 23-24 October in Dublin, Ireland. Nearly forty delegations, including international and regional tax organisations, participated in the Ninth Meeting of the OECD Forum on Tax Administration (FTA) and agreed that ever greater co-operation will be necessary to implement the results of the BEPS project and automatic exchange of information. Specifically they agreed: ** A strategy for systematic and enhanced co-operation between tax administrations; ** To invest the resources needed to implement the new standard on automatic exchange of information; and ** To improve the practical operation of the mutual agreement process. The communiqué contains links to the following publications that have just been released by the FTA: ** Increasing Taxpayers’ Use of Self-service Channels ** Working Smarter in Tax Debt Management ** Tax Compliance by Design – Achieving improved SME Tax Compliance by Adopting a System Perspective ** Measures of Tax Compliance Outcomes – A Practical Guide -- The FTA is the leading international body concerned with tax administration, bringing together the heads of tax administrations from the OECD, members of the G20 and large emerging economies.

This study introduces the concept of “Tax Compliance by design”. It describes how revenue bodies can exploit developments in technology and the ways in which modern SMEs organise themselves to incorporate tax compliance into the systems businesses use to manage their financial affairs. - Report can be read online or downloaded for $

The spread of the digital economy poses challenges for international taxation. This report sets out an analysis of these tax challenges. It notes that because the digital economy is increasingly becoming the economy itself, it would not be feasible to ring-fence the digital economy from the rest of the economy for tax purposes. The report notes, however, that certain business models and key features of the digital economy may exacerbate BEPS risks. These BEPS risks will be addressed by the work on the other Actions in the BEPS Action Plan, which will take the relevant features of the digital economy into account. The report also analyses a number of broader tax challenges raised by the digital economy, and discusses potential options to address them, noting the need for further work during 2015 to evaluate these broader challenges and potential option. - Report can be read online or $ for download

The OECD Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, July 2013, identifies 15 actions to address BEPS in a comprehensive manner and sets deadlines to implement these actions. Action 7 – Prevent the Artificial Avoidance of PE (permanent establishment) Status -- including through the use of commissionnaire arrangements and the specific activity exemptions. Work on these issues will also address related profit attribution issues. -- Public comments are invited on a discussion draft which ... includes proposals for changes to the definition of PE in the OECD Model Tax Convention. -- The Action Plan also notes that MNCs may artificially fragment their operations among multiple group entities to qualify for the exceptions to PE status for preparatory and auxiliary activities. -- Further, the Report Addressing the Tax Challenges of the Digital Economy has identified issues in the digital economy that need to be taken into account in the course of the work on Action 7, namely ensuring that core activities cannot inappropriately benefit from the exception from PE status and that artificial arrangements relating to sales of goods and services cannot be used to avoid PE status.

From OECD - "The debate over base erosion and profit shifting (‘BEPS’) has reached the highest political level and has become an issue on the agenda of several OECD and non-OECD countries… The G20 leaders’ meeting in Los Cabos on 18-19 June 2012 explicitly referred to “the need to prevent base erosion and profit shifting” in their final declaration. G20 finance ministers, triggered by a joint statement of UK Chancellor Osborne and German Finance Minister Shaüble, have asked the OECD to report on this issue by their meeting in February 2013. Such a concern was also voiced by US President Obama in his Framework for Business Tax Reform, where it is stated that “the empirical evidence suggests that income-shifting behaviour by multinational corporations is a significant concern that should be addressed through tax reform”." -- The BEPS project is essentially a bunch of working groups, composed of officials from the world’s largest economies, that are tasked with the job of trying to figure out how the international tax landscape for corporations should be changed. They are focusing on a few specific areas, including but not limited to: ** Tax avoidance by digital companies: Do different rules need to be created to specifically address the digital economy? ** Financial loopholes: What changes need to be made to prevent companies from using financial instruments like intercompany loans to avoid paying tax on some of their income? ** Intangibles: Should international transfer pricing norms be revised to make it harder for companies to reduce their taxes simply by moving their intangibles to low-tax jurisdictions? ** Documentation: What sort of international reporting standards could be imposed to make it harder for global companies to shift their income into low-tax jurisdictions?

After listing key filibusters -- What would it have meant for the economy and jobs to launch a post-stimulus effort to maintain and modernize our infrastructure? How about reversing the tax structure that pays companies to move jobs out of the country? How about equal pay for women? How about a minimum wage increase? How about hundreds of thousands of teachers and first responders going back to work? How about being able to organize into unions to fight for wages, benefits and safer working conditions? How about relief from crushing student loan debt? -- In the House GOP leadership has been following the “Hastert Rule” to obstruct bills that would win with a majority vote. -- So instead of looking at what has been blocked in the House, we should look at what has passed. What has passed is a record of economic sabotage. Noteworthy is the GOP “Path to Prosperity Budget” (“Ryan budget”), described as “Cuts spending & implements pro-growth reforms that boost job creation.” It dramatically cuts taxes on the rich. It privatizes Medicare. It cuts spending on infrastructure, health care for the poor, education, research, public-safety, and low-income programs. It turns Medicaid, food stamps, and other poverty programs into state block grants. And lo and behold, this GOP budget that passed the House cuts taxes and cuts funding for even maintaining – never mind modernizing – our vital infrastructure needs. This is a budget of economic sabotage. Other GOP House “jobs” bills, listed at Boehner’s “jobs” page include: -- horrifyingly awful policies with Orwellian titles or red meat specials -- special attention to keeping oil & gas subsidies flowing and eviserating regulation, especially EPA -- Johnson stresses, the voters are unaware of all this thanks in part to the MSM which is ballanced re political parties, pro business & anti labor, and guilty of mindlessly peddling what Wren-Lewis calls mediamacro. Good links

La genèse de l'État moderne est le fruit d'une lente évolution à partir de la seconde moitié du XIIIe siècle, qui a d'abord affecté les monarchies féodales d'Occident : il y a quelques années, elle a fait l'objet d'études systématiques de nombreux historiens en Europe, grâce au CNRS et à la Fondation européenne de la Science. Le présent ouvrage est une étude de cas, consacrée à l'Angleterre, à bien des égards la plus précoce et la plus cohérente des constructions politiques médiévales qui, paradoxalement, est peu étudiée par les historiens français. On y retrouve le primat de la guerre et de la fiscalité dans la dynamique de la genèse de l'État moderne, ainsi que la mise en place d'un système judiciaire garantissant la reproduction de la classe dominante dans des conditions satisfaisantes. Mais l'ouvrage permet surtout de relever et d'articuler la corrélation entre le développement et la vitalité de la société politique, dont l'existence est une condition sine qua non pour l'État moderne, et la mutation de la culture et du système de communication médiéval, tant au niveau des médias et de la langue qu'à celui des types de textes produits. Par l'analyse de plus de 2200 bio-bibliographies d'" auteurs " actifs dans les domaines de l'histoire et du politique, et au moyen d'une théorie des champs de production textuelle, se dégage ce qu'a été l'idéologie spécifique du féodalisme d'État. Alors naissent progressivement les catégories modernes du politique, ainsi que la notion d'une société politique " nationale " -- Recommended in Penguin history of England bibliographies

The arm’s-length standard assumes that related entities are unrelated and seeks to find the price at which they would have bought and sold in the marketplace. A MNE, however, exists as an integrated firm precisely to avoid marketplace transactions. Disregarding that irreconcilable conflict may not have mattered in avoiding double taxation a half-century ago. But today the fiction of unrelated parties and market transactions not just obfuscates reality but can also compound the double nontaxation problem. This is especially true of intangibles that by definition have no physical situs and can therefore be deemed to have been created almost anywhere. Increasingly, an MNE’s profits are derived from intangibles and reinvested in research that develops and refines these virtual assets. As long as the OECD retains the blinkers of the arm’s-length standard, it is unlikely to see most cross-border research endeavors for what they truly are—cynical attempts at gaming the international tax regime. Treasury’s export of Surrey’s arm’s-length standard was perhaps the most successful case of ideological conversion in the arena of international tax policy. But the United States itself has been inching away from that construct. In 1986 Congress amended section 482 to require a "commensurate with income” standard for transfers of intangibles. Treasury proposed the profit-split method in 1988 and more recently finalized the cost-sharing regulations. Each of those attempts at reform rejects the simple-minded notion of market transactions between unrelated parties. The OECD, however, clings to the gospel of the arm’s-length standard with a zeal befitting a convert. It seems that Treasury will have to renounce the dogma of Surrey’s infallibility before a true reformation in transfer pricing can finally get underway.

Standard & Poor’s [pdf] finds a strong correlation between growing income inequality and the fiscal crisis of the states. The argument is pretty straightforward: rising income inequality since the late 1970s has been accompanied by two trends in the tax revenues received by the various states: a slowing in the rate of growth of tax revenues (from 1980 to 2011, average annual state tax revenue growth fell to 5 percent from 10 percent) and by a growing volatility in state tax revenues (from a standard deviation of 3.55 during 1950-1979 and 1.04 during 1990-1999 to 5.78 from 2000 to 2009). And the explanation for this relationship? - " the higher savings rates of those with high incomes causes aggregate consumer spending to suffer. And since one person’s spending is another person’s income, the result is slower overall personal income growth despite continued strong income gains at the top." On top of that, "Those at the top obtain more of their income from capital gains, which on the whole, fluctuate much more than income from wages. Tax revenues reflect this — both as a consequence of higher top-end tax rates and because the top end is where the income growth has occurred –- and are, therefore, more volatile." Thus, we should understand the following: when Standard & Poor’s downgrades the credit rating of one or another state, it’s actually downgrading the rise of income inequality within and across the states.

William Gale and Andy Samwick have a new Brookings paper [link] out on the relationship of tax rates and economic growth in the U.S. Short answer, there is no relationship. They do not identify any change in the trend growth rate of real GDP per capita with changes in marginal income tax rates, capital gains tax rates, or any changes in federal tax rules. -- didn't download

Downloaded pdf to Note

OECD (2013), Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, Paris: OECD Publishing. Downloaded pdf to Note

IMF experience in developing countries points to some distinctive policy issues. Over the past 2 decades, developing countries have signed a huge number of tax treaties. But the evidence on whether they actually affect FDI (plagued by endogeneity issues) is mixed at best. What we do see in our country work are sometimes significant revenue losses, reinforced by the ability of MNCs to route and structure their intra-group payments to exploit treaty arrangements. This has for some while led IMF staff to (cautiously) urge caution in signing treaties – a view... included in the G20-OECD Action Plan of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project. [A less prominent but important issue] is the tax treatment of capital gains on the transfer of interest in assets, such as telecoms or mineral licenses – it may be possible to avoid tax in the country where these assets are inherently located by holding them through a chain of offshore companies, and then selling the claim to a low-tax jurisdiction. This has emerged as a macro-relevant concern in several low-income countries (such as Mauritania and Uganda). *-* The underlying policy issue is one of spillovers in international taxation – the effects that, through the ways in which business reacts, one country’s tax decisions have an impact on others. A low or zero tax rate on income arising in a country is only the most obvious route. Network externalities also arise from the signing of treaties (if A, which has a treaty with B, signs another with C, in effect creating a treaty between B and C without consent from B); and countries can compete over tax bases by special regimes for types of income or activities. *-* one has to start by looking at the basic architecture of international taxation. -- closer to where the world may be heading, is moving toward a combination of arm’s-length pricing on transactions where this is relatively easy (such as for most tangibles) and a formulaic profit split where it is not (such as for most intangibles). And there are other suggestions for fundamentally different international tax policies, such as that for destination-based corporate tax, which mimics a VAT but with a deduction for the cost of labour.

As the ratio of capital to income (which Piketty terms "beta") increases, Piketty argues there is no natural mechanism that would lead r (the rate of return on capital) to adjust downwards so as to perfectly compensate the impact on the distribution, placing emphasis on policies that might reduce r. Taxation is one way to reduce r and Piketty's proposal is a progressive world-wide tax on wealth although many agree that this may prove politically unfeasible, especially in the absence of international legal cooperation. Other tax possibilities for fighting inequality include increasing tax rates on capital gains and dividends (which have been getting favorable treatment in the tax code as compared with labor income), or simply combating tax evasion for the wealthy (see The Price of Offshore Revisited). [Downloaded] In my own research, I plan to run simulations to test the effectiveness of such tax proposals, and their impact on the wealth distribution. -- According to a study written for the Tax Justice Network by a former chief economist at the consultancy firm McKinsey, a global super-rich elite has accumulated an astronomical amount of financial investments hidden in tax havens, at least $21 trillion and as much as $32 trillion of private offshore wealth (as of the end of 2010).

USC Gould School of Law -- USC CLASS Research Papers Series No. CLASS 14-26 - USC Legal Studies Research Papers Series No. 14-34 -- The recent wave of corporate tax inversions has triggered interest in what motivates these tax-driven transactions now. Corporate executives have argued that inversions are explained by an "anti-competitive" U.S. tax environment, as evidenced by the federal corporate tax statutory rate, which is high by international standards, and by its "worldwide" tax base. This paper explains why this competitiveness narrative is largely fact-free, in part by using one recent articulation of that narrative (by Emerson Electric Co.’s former vice-chairman) as a case study. The recent surge in interest in inversion transactions is explained primarily by U.S. based multinational firms’ increasingly desperate efforts to find a use for their stockpiles of offshore cash (now totaling around $1 trillion), and by a desire to "strip" income from the U.S. domestic tax base through intragroup interest payments to a new parent company located in a lower-taxed foreign jurisdiction. These motives play out against a backdrop of corporate existential despair over the political prospects for tax reform, or for a second "repatriation tax holiday" of the sort offered by Congress in 2004. '- Number of Pages in PDF File: 32 -- didn't download

PHILIP LOFT - University College London -- This article explores the role of the method of political arithmetic and political arithmeticians in the changing methods of raising finance during the Nine Years War. It discusses the actions of parliament-men in committees and their interaction with reports containing data, and the influence of projectors on the decision to introduce, and later abandon, the pound rate. Throughout this period, political arithmeticians were active participants, providing data, advice, and schemes to the treasury and parliament, and when they were not, ‘country’ MPs, in particular, were active in calling for data and leading its cross-examination. This article suggests that debates on public finance did not occur along party lines, with ‘county communities’ given fresh presence by the quantification of the inequality of the land tax burden. Political arithmetic is shown to have played an important role in the processes and negotiations that occurred over the setting of taxation policy in the ‘long eighteenth century’. -* I thank Julian Hoppit for his generous encouragement and comments on this article. Thanks also to Clare Jackson, Andrew Preston and the anonymous reviewers. - available for download - to Note

PATRICK A. WALSH - University College, Dublin (& UCL post doc fellowship) -- This article examines the Irish fiscal-military state in the eighteenth century. It locates the Irish state within a broader imperial context showing how Ireland contributed to the wider British imperial project. In particular, this article looks at the development of an efficient tax-gathering apparatus, showing how the revenue board, the most pervasive agency of the eighteenth-century Irish state, extracted increasing levels of taxation from a sometimes hostile population. Drawing extensively on the records of the Irish revenue commissioners, a very rich if under utilized source, it demonstrates for the first time the levels of taxation raised in Ireland, while also exploring how these taxes were collected. It concludes that this period saw the expansion of an increasingly professional bureaucracy, challenging existing interpretations that have focused predominantly on politicization. The final section looks at issues of evasion and compliance, showing the difficulties faced by the Irish state in this period, as it expanded deeper into Irish society. -* I would like to thank Stephen Conway, Niamh Cullen, Julian Hoppit, Eoin Magennis, and Ivar McGrath, as well as the two anonymous readers, for their comments on earlier drafts.

Ellis Sandoz, The Roots of Liberty: Magna Carta, Ancient Constitution, and the Anglo-American Tradition of Rule of Law, edited and with an Introduction by Ellis Sandoz (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008). 07/12/2014. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2180> -- This is a critical collection of essays on the origin and nature of the idea of liberty. The authors explore the development of English ideas of liberty and the relationship those ideas hold to modern conceptions of rule of law. The essays address early medieval developments, encompassing such seminal issues as the common-law mind of the sixteenth century under the Tudor monarchs, the struggle for power and authority between the Stuart kings and Parliament in the seventeenth century, and the role of the ancient constitution in the momentous legal and constitutional debate that occurred between the Glorious Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence. Authors -- Corinne Comstock Weston - John Phillip Reid - Paul Christianson - Christopher W. Brooks - James Clarke Holt - Editor: Ellis Sandoz -- a lot of historiography discussion of legal history, politics and political philosophy - interesting to see their take on Pocock - original publication date 1993, so bibliography will be a bit dated and the articles won't reflect all the waves of revisionism but important place to start -- downloaded pdf to Note

Henry Home, Lord Kames, Sketches of the History of Man Considerably enlarged by the last additions and corrections of the author, edited and with an Introduction by James A. Harris (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007). 3 Vols. 07/11/2014. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2031> -- Written late in his life, this 3 volume work deals with the idea of human progress. Vol. 1 deals with progress in property law, commerce, the treatment of women, and luxury. Vol. 2 deals with the development of states, government, and taxation. Vol. 3 deals with the progress of science.

Sir Edward Coke, The Selected Writings and Speeches of Sir Edward Coke, ed. Steve Sheppard (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). 3 vols. 07/11/2014. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1884> -- A 3 vol. set of The Selected Writings. Vol. 1 contains a long introduction by the editor and 13 parts of the Reports [downloaded to Note]. Vol. 2 contains Coke’s Speech at Norwich, exerpts from the small treatises, and exerpts from the 4 parts of the Institutes. Vol. 3 contains Coke’s speech in Parliament (inlcuding the Petiton of Right), a number of official acts related to Coke’s career, and other matters.

Sir Edward Coke, The Selected Writings and Speeches of Sir Edward Coke, ed. Steve Sheppard (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003). Vol. 1. 07/11/2014. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/911> -- Vol. 1 of a 3 vol. set of The Selected Writings. This volume contains a long introduction by the editor and 13 parts of the Reports. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Useful for bibliography and overview of century of revisionism and counter revisionism since Gardiner. See Kishlansky for further counter-counter revisionism on Petition of Right that places more blame on the radical enemies of Buckingham including Selden-- downloaded pdf to Note

This article exonerates Charles I and Attorney General Sir Robert Heath from charges that they tampered with the records of the court of King's Bench in the Five Knights' Case. It refutes allegations made by John Selden in the parliament of 1628 and repeated by modern historians. Selden's attack on Heath and the king's government was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of King's Bench enrolments and a radical view of the crown's intentions in imprisoning loan resisters. The view that Charles was attempting to establish the prerogative right to imprison opponents without remedy at common law has no basis in either the arguments presented during the Five Knights' Case or the king's behaviour both before and during the parliament. By accepting the most radical critique of Caroline government at face value, historians have concluded that Charles was attempting to establish a `legal tyranny'. This article rejects these views. -- among other criticisms, notes that historians following Pocock have elevated a "common law mentality" to the heart of 17thC political culture, thereby underestimating the radicalism of Selden, Coke et al in forcing the confrontation that converted the Petition of Right into a non-negotiable statue that was subsequently used in proceedings against the king's actions during Personal Rule -- didn't download

New IMF study - Inequality has the potential to undermine growth. However, greater redistribution requires higher tax rates, which reduce incentives to work and save. Moreover, the evidence that inequality is bad for growth might simply reflect the fact that more unequal societies choose to redistribute more, and those efforts are antithetical to growth. This column presents evidence from a new dataset on pre- and post-tax inequality. The authors find that income equality is protective of growth, and that redistributive transfers on average have little if any direct adverse impact on growth.

A first step could be a multisector model with both a productive sector and an extractive, rent-seeking outlet for investment, so that the rate of return on capital has the potential to be unanchored from the growth of the economy. This model could potentially do a better job of explaining r > g in a world where capital has highly profitable opportunities in rent-seeking ....More fundamentally, a model that started with the financial and firm-level institutions underneath the supply and demand curves for capital, rather than blackboxing them in production and utility functions, could illuminate complementarities among the host of other political demands that would claw back the share taken by capital and lower the amount paid out as profits before the fiscal system gets its take. This is putting meat on what Brad Delong calls the “wedge” between the actual and warranted rate of profit. -- We need even more and even better economics to figure out which of these may get undone via market responses and which won’t, and to think about them jointly with the politics that make each feasible or not. While Piketty’s book diagnoses the problem of capital’s voracious appetite, it would require a different kind of model to take our focus off the nominal quantities registered by state fiscal systems, and instead onto the broader distribution of political power in the world economy.

Historians have long maintained that the rise of the British empire brought an end to the great age of piracy, turning the once violent Atlantic frontier into a locus of orderly commerce by 1730. Guy Chet documents the persistence of piracy, smuggling, and other forms of illegal trade throughout the 18thC despite ongoing governmental campaigns to stamp it out. The failure of the Royal Navy to police oceanic trade reflected the state’s limited authority and legitimacy at port, in the courts, and in the hearts and minds of Anglo-American constituents. Chet shows how the traditional focus on the growth of the modern state overlooks the extent to which old attitudes and cultural practices continued to hold sway. Even as the British government extended its naval, legal, and bureaucratic reach, in many parts of the Atlantic world illegal trade was not only tolerated but encouraged. In part this was because Britain’s constabulary command of the region remained more tenuous than some have suggested, and in part because maritime insurance and wartime tax policies ensured that piracy and smuggling remained profitable. When Atlantic piracy eventually waned in the early 19thC, it had more to do with a reduction in its profitability at port than with forceful confrontation at sea. -- Jack Greene gives it high marks

Very useful critique of notion of "capital" used by Piketty. Doesn't quarrel with the accumulation dynamics but the attempt to tie rates of return on "capital" and growth rates (presumably reflecting capital labor ratio). What Piketty is really measuring isn't capital in the production function (which in any event Galbraith dings per the Cambridge capital theorists), but financial wealth, which varies with asset prices. The historical pattern of the ratio of wealth to GDP is accurate, but not the causal story.

For long overview of the article, see her post from the LSE blog -- Perspectives on Politics, 11, pp 1051-1070. doi:10.1017/S153759271300282X. - That the market economy inevitably leads to inequality is widely accepted today, with disagreement confined to the desirability of redistributive action, its extent, and the role of government in the process. The canonical text of liberal political economy, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, is assumed even in the most progressive interpretations to accept inequality, rationalized as the inevitable trade-off for increasing prosperity compared to less developed but more equal economies. I argue instead that Smith's system, if fully implemented, would not allow steep inequalities to arise. In Smith, profits should be low and labor wages high, legislation in favor of the worker is “always just and equitable,” land should be distributed widely and evenly, inheritance laws liberalized, taxation can be high if it is equitable, and the science of the legislator is necessary to put the system in motion and keep it aligned. Market economies are made in Smith's system. Political theorists and economists have highlighted some of these points, but the counterfactual “what would the distribution of wealth be if all the building blocks were ever in place?” has not been posed. Doing so encourages us to question why steep inequality is accepted as a fact, instead of a pathology that the market economy was not supposed to generate in the first place. --Deborah Boucoyannis is Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia (dab5fw@virginia.edu). Her interests lie in the historical preconditions for the emergence of the liberal order and of constitutionalism.

Overview of her article in Perspectives on Politics - see Cambridge Journals bookmark - The assumption that Adam Smith accepted inequality as the necessary trade-off for a more prosperous economy is wrong, writes Deborah Boucoyannis. In reality, Smith’s system precluded steep inequalities not out of a normative concern with equality but by virtue of the design that aimed to maximise the wealth of nations. Much like many progressive critics of current inequality, Smith targets rentier practices by the rich and powerful as distorting economic outcomes.

Not statistics but the collection and study of information about the states of Europe - connected to cameralism and focus on political economy rather than military -though clearly how to survive and thrive as an independent state in the European system a major impetus. Van der Zande uses analogy of Venetian ambassadors. Gets launched in a big way in 1750s and has ceased to be a separate important discipline by the early 19thC, the apparent victim of Germany's historical age. Interesting view of motives, academic and bureaucratic resources German states within and without the HRE, the European system, alternative philosophies of human nature, happiness, commerce and the roles of the state. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Extensive list of books, chapters, journal articles, periodically updated since 2011 -- Contents --
1. History and Methodology of Heterodox Microeconomics
2. Critiques of Mainstream Microeconomics
3. Principles of Heterodox Microeconomic Theory
4. Theory of the Business Enterprise
5. Structure of Production and Costs of the Business Enterprise
6. Costing, Pricing, and Prices
7. Investment, Finance, and Employment
8. Households, Consumption, and Market Demand
9. Industry and Market
10. Competition
11. Corporate Governance, Market Governance, and Market Regulation
12. Social Welfare
13. Heterodox Microfoundations and Modeling the Economy

In 1795, the parish of Speen, in Berkshire, England, embarked on a radical new system of poor relief. Due to the ruinous French wars and a series of poor harvests, grain prices were rising sharply. As bread was the staple food of the poor, rising grain prices increased poverty and caused unrest. Concerned by the possibility of riots, the parish decided to provide subsistence-level income support to the working poor. -- Discusses Poor Laws pre 1832, Bentham attitude to work, Ricardo concern with labor supply, Malthus contrihution to debate - and Deidre McCloskey studies - and post 1834 workhouse system

We revisit the evidence on the relations between institutions, the cost of government debt, and financial development in Britain (1690-1790) and find that interest rates remained high and volatile for four decades after the Glorious Revolution, partly due to wars and instability; British interest rates co-moved with those in Holland; Debt per capita remained lower in Britain than in Holland until around 1780; and Britain did not borrow at lower rates than European countries with more limited protection of property rights. We conclude that, in the short run, institutional reforms are not rewarded by financial markets. -- reasonably up to date bibliography on institutional_economics, behavioral_economics, financial markets (Shleifer et al), emerging markets, economic history of 17thC 18thC 19thC re industrial revolution, crowding_out and public finance -- downloaded pdf to Note

Historiographical split between those who see excise protests as political instability and economic historians who love excise taxes for all the revenue it brings in - need a better approach to linking public protest and policies -- part of Braddick program on public finance and where policies actually played out so useful historiography and bibliography-- didn't download

It can often seem that William Hogarth's famous Gin Lane (1751) says all that would ever need to be said about the “gin craze” of the early eighteenth century. The engraving has come to be virtually identified with its subject, revealing and circumscribing possible histories within its familiar lines. Yet, Gin Lane appeared at a determinate moment, chronologically marking the end of the gin craze and the culmination of one phase in the history of proletarian drinking. During this phase, as I will argue, there were significant changes in both the social conditions and relations that shaped laboring-class drinking and the ideas through which the propertied classes attempted to understand and control it. That this has not been argued before suggests how many historians have approached this phenomenon as a distinct social problem with fairly simple, basic features. -- downloaded pdf to Note

With regard to public policy, in late seventeenth-century Britain there was a remarkable development of social statistics, what Petty called 'political arithmetic'. The general view, however, is that this new approach ended early in the eighteenth century only to be rediscovered by the early Victorian statistical movement. In fact, through the eighteenth century public policy continued to be considered partly in quantitative terms. This article explores some of the dimensions and peculiarities of this varied and extensive political arithmetic. -- downloaded pdf to Note

I. Mercantilists not desirous of mere numbers, 698.--Importance of employment, 700.--Remedies for idleness: provision of employment, 702; corrective and punitive legislation, 705.--II. Condemnation of luxury, 708.--Means of curbing it: sumptuary laws, 712; taxation, 713; moral suasion, 713.--Defense of luxury, 714.--Hume's views, 716.--Conclusions, 718.

Can see something to tax as it moves vs things that can be hidden (evade taxes) -- recommended by Chris Blattman -- The state is among the greatest developments in human history and a precursor of economic growth. Why do states arise, and when do they fail to arise? A dominant view across disciplines is that states arise when violent actors impose a "monopoly of violence" in order to extract taxes. One key fact underlies all existing studies: no census exists prior to the state. In this paper, I provide the first econometric evidence on the determinants of state formation. As a foundation for this study, I conducted fieldwork in stateless areas of Eastern Congo, managing a team that collected village-level panel data on current armed groups. I develop a model that introduces optimal taxation theory to the decision of armed groups to form states, and argue that the returns to such decision hinge on their ability to tax the local population. A sharp, exogenous rise in the price of a bulky commodity used in the video-game industry, coltan, leads armed groups to impose a "monopoly of violence" in coltan villages. A later increase in the price of gold, easier to conceal and hence more difficult to tax, does not. Results based on two alternative identification strategies are also consistent with the model. The findings support the hypothesis that the expected revenue from taxation, in particular tax base elasticity, is a determinant of state formation.

Looks at range of institutional work (Thelen, Pierson etc) - mostly praise for recent work that's a comparative combination of historical sociology, political science, political economy, with implications for work in Tilly's tradition of fiscal-military_state -- Wenkai HE's Paths toward the Modern Fiscal State: England, Japan, and China is a timely and interesting contribution. HE undertakes a comparative study of the emergence of what he calls the "modern fiscal state" in Britain, China, and Japan. He has undertaken to learn enough about these three cases in detail to be able to tell a reasonably detailed story of the emergence of this set of state tax and revenue institutions in the three settings, and he is thereby poised to consider some important institutional-causal questions about the innovations he observes. The book is a "cross-over" work, with political science methods and historical research content. The book combines new institutionalism, comparative historical sociology, and first-rate historical scholarship to make a compelling historical argument.. .... One thing that I particularly appreciate about HE's work is his ability to combine structure and agency into a single coherent analysis and explanation.

Now showing up in the quasi-libertarian Right -- Like the current benefits system, this would provide a safety net. But ‘benefits traps’, where people lose as much in benefits as they earn from work, would be eliminated. A basic income system like this would be at least as clear as the PAYE income tax system is, and substantially clearer than the current benefits system. The dog’s breakfast of welfare schemes that currently exist – all to address the symptoms of poverty, rather than the root – would be abolished, and with it the jumble of unanticipated and often undiscernable interactions between schemes that lead to perverse outcomes.

Best of all, a basic income is the least paternalistic welfare scheme possible. Instead of pushing would-be computer programmers into work as Poundland assistants, a scheme like this would leave decisions entirely up to the individuals involved. The discovery process that each of us is engaged in would continue, and now without mass decision-making by a central state authority.

Letter from an investment adviser re breakdown of top 1% - it's the upper reaches that depend on the financial sector and capital gains for the outsized wealth, and the political system (structure of financial system, tax policy etc) caters to their sources of income and wealth

The Reagan-Thatcher revolution changed society's beliefs about taxes. If we want economic growth shared fairly, we must rethink

In the end, the future of top tax rates depends on what the public believes about whether top pay fairly reflects productivity or whether top pay, rather unfairly, arises from rent-seeking. With higher income concentration, top earners have more economic resources to influence both social beliefs (through thinktanks and media) and policies (through lobbying), thereby creating some "reverse causality" between income inequality, perceptions, and policies.

The job of economists should be to make a top rate tax level of 80% at least "thinkable" again.

• This is an updated version of an article originally published by VoxEU

Charts from Dickson re interest rates on UK bonds through 18thC and the interest rates spikes during War of Spanish Succession -- links to classic studies (JSTOR) estimating slower growth during 18thC and speculating on crowding out. Link to McColloch paper disputing that Bubble Act reduced industrial investment in 18thC. Vernengo doesn't mention either usury controls or, more important for his speculation that finance for investment grew only as demand grew, that Britain was most heavily taxed and relied increasingly on consumption taxes that would have an impact on growth of demand. Temin and Voth theory that focuses on banking, and less on capital markets (do they think Bubble Act was important? ), other than relations between banking system and sovereign debt market. Vernengo cites papers (including from 1950s) that see Bank of England providing liquidity to the whole system especially in 2nd half of 18thC through the expansion of the revenue collection and government spending process -- new country banks also collecting taxes and the government was spending large amounts on war. Vernengo mentions that in earlier post on same topic and McColloch paper. JSTOR papers are downloaded to Note

JSTOR: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 963-991-- downloaded pdf to Note -- The writing and allocation of French tax farm contracts changed dramatically after the Fronde (1648-1653): they were gradually transformed from small, competitively auctioned, units into a large cartel known as the Company of General Farms. Surprisingly, the crown's revenues increased. I present a transaction cost argument to explain the behavior of tax farm lease prices as tax farming changed during the seventeenth century. Cartelization of tax farms lowered costs faced by the crown. The tax farm system's evolution offers insights into how organizations evolve to protect their property rights in the absence of well functioning representative institutions.

JSTOR: Social History, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 1-17 -- downloaded pdf to Note -- the theoretical background to Braddick work on local government, taxation, authority and challenges in Three Kingdoms etc -- focus on state building process not on state as entity

JSTOR: The Historical Journal, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 789-812 -- downloaded pdf to Note

JSTOR: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Jun., 1962), pp. 146-160

JSTOR: Social Forces, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Dec., 2001), pp. 411-448 -- downloaded pdf to Note -'- Although the causal impact of war on state-making in the early modern era is now widely accepted, there is less consensus about the way in which war affects levels of taxation, and the factors that might strengthen or weaken the relationship. Two questions can be posed: Do individual wars produce immediate effects on taxes, or is the cumulative effect of long periods of warfare more important? How do variations in administrative capacity and the strength of representative institutions affect the extent to which war pushes the growth of the state? This article attempts to answer these questions with a quantitative analysis of the effects of war on taxation in early modern England and France. We find that the cumulative effect of war is strong in both cases, suggesting that war made states via a "ratchet effect," and that this effect is much stronger when the administrative capacity of states is improved by centralization and bureaucratization. Strong representative assemblies decrease the effect of war on state growth in France but increase it in England, due to the very different characteristics of these institutions in the two countries.

JSTOR: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Dec., 1985), pp. 617-651 -- downloaded pdf to Note

1740s and 1750s Patriots fights with establisment Whigs against national debt and taxes - fight over Glorious Revolution legacy- "austerity" has a long history. Also anti imperialism re control of foreign dominions - an empire only of trade. A bit confused re 1st few decades after 1688 and rise of fiscal-military state but lots of links.

Economists usually think of taxation as inefficient. This column argues that the anti-tax rhetoric evident in much lay discussion of public policy draws considerable support from the prevalent negative language of professional economic discourse. Optimal income taxation doesn’t have to employ the pejorative concepts of inefficiency, deadweight loss and distortion; and this column argues that it is high time for economists to discard them and make analysis of taxation and public spending distortion-free.

Much of the conventional economic wisdom prevailing in financial circles, largely subscribed to as a basis for governmental policy, and widely accepted by the media and the public, is based on incomplete analysis, contrafactual assumptions, and false analogy. For instance, encouragement to saving is advocated without attention to the fact that for most people encouraging saving is equivalent to discouraging consumption and reducing market demand, and a purchase by a consumer or a government is also income to vendors and suppliers, and government debt is also an asset.
?......
Analytical reality: This "Ricardian equivalence" thesis, while referred to by Ricardo, may not in the end have been subscribed to by him. In any case its validity depends crucially on the system of taxation expected to be used to finance the debt service.At one extreme, in a Georgist economy making exclusive use of a "single tax" on land values, and where land values are expected to evolve proportionally over time, any debt becomes in effect a collective mortgage on the land parcels. Any increase in government debt to offset current tax reduction depresses the market value of land by an equal amount, aggregate wealth of individual is unaffected, Ricardian equivalence is complete and pure fiscal policy is impotent. A larger debt may still be desirable in terms of taking advantage of possibly lower interest rates available on government debt than on individual mortgages, and in effectively endowing property with a built-in assumable mortgage that facilitates the financing of transfers. And there may still be a possibility for stimulating the economy by tax-financed expenditures that redistribute income towards those with a higher propensity to spend.

Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez. 2013. "The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 27(3): 3-20.
The top 1 percent income share has more than doubled in the United States over the last 30 years, drawing much public attention in recent years. While other English-speaking countries have also experienced sharp increases in the top 1 percent income share, many high-income countries such as Japan, France, or Germany have seen much less increase in top income shares. Hence, the explanation cannot rely solely on forces common to advanced countries, such as the impact of new technologies and globalization on the supply and demand for skills. Moreover, the explanations have to accommodate the falls in top income shares earlier in the twentieth century experienced in virtually all high-income countries. We highlight four main factors. The first is the impact of tax policy, which has varied over time and differs across countries. Top tax rates have moved in the opposite direction from top income shares. The effects of top rate cuts can operate in conjunction with other mechanisms. The second factor is a richer view of the labor market, where we contrast the standard supply-side model with one where pay is determined by bargaining and the reactions to top rate cuts may lead simply to a redistribution of surplus. Indeed, top rate cuts may lead managerial energies to be diverted to increasing their remuneration at the expense of enterprise growth and employment. The third factor is capital income. Overall, private wealth (relative to income) has followed a U-shaped path over time, particularly in Europe, where inherited wealth is, in Europe if not in the United States, making a return. The fourth, little investigated, element is the correlation between earned income and capital income, which has substantially increased in recent decades in the United States.
Downloaded pdf to Note

Compared with other OECD economies, we don't want our citizens to have children, we want them to drive a lot, we want them to get fat etc
Very clever and depressing

Noah destroys "just deserts" with a fable

the traditional way in which economists estimate the economic effects of taxes does not look apt.Normally, economists model labor as something that employees sell to employers. Raise income taxes and you cut the price received by the employee, so he works less. Cut taxes and he works more.A cardiologist might behave exactly like that, doing more procedures if his taxes are cut. But Lady Gaga can't very easily decide to produce twice as many hit songs. She might only have so many good ideas.

Summary: This paper examines the distributional effects of fiscal consolidation. Using episodes of fiscal consolidation for a sample of 17 OECD countries over the period 1978–2009, we find that fiscal consolidation has typically had significant distributional effects by raising inequality, decreasing wage income shares and increasing long-term unemployment. The evidence also suggests that spending-based adjustments have had, on average, larger distributional effects than tax-based adjustments.

Introduction and summary downloaded in Docs/Policy
This report lays out a wide-ranging plan for economic progress. It is a plan that encompasses investment and reform. It is a plan that proposes doing more of some things but, importantly, it is a plan to do more things well.

The fourth in an Inequality.Org series on the giant pools of assets in America that produce income not currently subject to taxation.

Read the first article in this series: Retirement Vehicle or Giveaway to the Rich?
The second article in this series: Looting the Treasury to Benefit Big Insurance
The third article in this series: Tax-Free Municipals: An Unnecessary Giveaway

Pdf available
This paper reviews empirical trends in pre- and post-tax income inequality since 1979 and summarizes recent empirical and theoretical research on the role of tax policy in exacerbating market-based income inequality. It finds that increasing top marginal tax rates could yield potentially large results in slowing the growth of income inequality, and as shown in Fieldhouse (2013a), do so without substantially reducing productive economic activity: