At the time of this volume's publication in 1985, general equilibrium modelling had become a significant area of applied economic research. Its focus was to develop techniques to facilitate economy-wide quantitative assessment of allocative and distributional impacts on policy changes. UK Tax Policy and Applied General Equilibrium Analysis was the first book-length treatment of the development and application of an applied general equilibrium model of the Walrasian type, constructed to analyse UK taxation and subsidy policy. As a whole, UK Tax Policy and Applied General Equilibrium Analysis offers the reader two things. First, it gives a detailed account of the development of an applied general equilibrium model of the UK. Second, it provides results of model experiments which have been designed to inform the policy debate, not only in the UK but also in other countries. It should thus be of interest to both researchers and students undertaking research in the applied general equilibrium area and to policy makers concerned with tax reform.

This book reports the authors' research on one of the most sophisticated general equilibrium models designed for tax policy analysis. Significantly disaggregated and incorporating the complete array of federal, state, and local taxes, the model represents the U.S. economy and tax system in a large computer package. The authors consider modifications of the tax system, including those being raised in current policy debates, such as consumption-based taxes and integration of the corporate and personal income tax systems. A counterfactual economy associated with each of these alternatives is generated, and the possible outcomes are compared.

This book uses a computable general equilibrium framework to eval uate recent value-added tax reform proposals in the European Union from a welfare point of view. After the publication of the "White Paper" (1985) on the completion of the internal European market, an intense and heated debate about tax impediments to free trade set in. According to the original plans of the Commission of the European Union, not only physical border controls but also fiscal frontiers within the European Union would have been abolished on New Year's Day 1993. With respect to value added taxation this amounted to replacing the destination by the origin principle. Even though the origin principle had been favored by some economists from the establishment of a common European value-added tax system, time was not yet ripe for this change. In December 1991, the ECOFIN Council could only agree on the so called transitional system. In essence, these transitional arrangements maintain the destination principle as far as possible but shift the border tax procedure from national frontiers to firms. The transitional system is supposed to expire on December 31, 1996, with the final solution for value-added taxation in the European Union being decided upon by the ECOFIN Council until December, 1995. In the event of no decision the transitional arrangements will be continued. The most likely solution will be a switch to the origin principle combined with some clearing mechanism to prevent major revenue reallocations between member states.

The central idea underlying this work is to convert the Walrasian general equilibrium structure (formalized in the 1950s by Kenneth Arrow, Gerard Debreu and others) from an abstract representation of an economy into realistic models of actual economies.

The papers in this much-needed collection employ Applied General Equilibrium methodology to address a wide variety of concerns within the European Union. Contributors examine five main policy areas: * international market integration * policy simulations with alternative treatments of factor markets * policies for carbon dioxide abatement * competi