Income from capital receives uneven treatment in both the tax system and the loan markets. This affects almost every investment decision make by the individuals, business, and government and causes major disruptions in the economy. In this book C. Eugene Steuerle shows how the misallocation of capital results from the interaction of tax laws, the operation of the market for loanable funds, and inflation. He first analyzes the taxation of capital income, focusing on the distortions caused by tax arbitrage and on inflation-induced discriminations among both taxpayer and borrowers. The author then applies this analysis to several related issues. He concludes with a reform agenda that calls for the adoption of a broader-based, flatter-rate income tax.

Income from capital receives uneven treatment in both the tax system and the loan markets. This affects almost every investment decision make by the individuals, business, and government and causes major disruptions in the economy. In this book C. Eugene Steuerle shows how the misallocation of capital results from the interaction of tax laws, the operation of the market for loanable funds, and inflation. He first analyzes the taxation of capital income, focusing on the distortions caused by tax arbitrage and on inflation-induced discriminations among both taxpayer and borrowers. The author then applies this analysis to several related issues. He concludes with a reform agenda that calls for the adoption of a broader-based, flatter-rate income tax.

This paper investigates the short-term effects of fiscal consolidation on economic activity in OECD economies. We examine the historical record, including Budget Speeches and IMFdocuments, to identify changes in fiscal policy motivated by a desire to reduce the budget deficit and not by responding to prospective economic conditions. Using this new dataset, our estimates suggest fiscal consolidation has contractionary effects on private domestic demand and GDP. By contrast, estimates based on conventional measures of the fiscal policy stance used in the literature support the expansionary fiscal contractions hypothesis but appear to be biased toward overstating expansionary effects.

Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation brings together fourteen papers that show the importance of the interaction between tax rules and monetary policy. Based on theoretical and empirical research, these papers emphasize the importance of including explicit specifications of the tax system in such study.

High public debt often produces the drama of default and restructuring. But debt is also reduced through financial repression, a tax on bondholders and savers via negative or belowmarket real interest rates. After WWII, capital controls and regulatory restrictions created a captive audience for government debt, limiting tax-base erosion. Financial repression is most successful in liquidating debt when accompanied by inflation. For the advanced economies, real interest rates were negative 1⁄2 of the time during 1945–1980. Average annual interest expense savings for a 12—country sample range from about 1 to 5 percent of GDP for the full 1945–1980 period. We suggest that, once again, financial repression may be part of the toolkit deployed to cope with the most recent surge in public debt in advanced economies.

Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policy makers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources, thereby raising productivity. This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and ’80s, which saw rising inflation in many nations, and which propelled interest rates across the developing world into the double digits. In the decades since, the immediate cause of the period’s rise in inflation has been the subject of considerable debate. Among the areas of contention are the role of monetary policy in driving inflation and the implications this had both for policy design and for evaluating the performance of those who set the policy. Here, contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on the ways in which the lessons of the Great Inflation were absorbed and applied to today’s global and increasingly complex economic environment.

Edited by Victor Thuronyi, this book offers an introduction to a broad range of issues in comparative tax law and is based on comparative discussion of the tax laws of developed countries. It presents practical models and guidelines for drafting tax legislation that can be used by officials of developing and transition countries. Volume I covers general issues, some special topics, and major taxes other than income tax.