The observation that collection lags combine with inflation to erode fiscal revenues has long been a strong argument against seigniorage (Tanzi (1978)). However, with the exception of Dixit (1991), who used a general equilibrium model to reject this argument, the optimal tax literature has not analyzed how collection lags affect desired tax structures. In this paper, this issue is re-examined using an overlapping generations version of Dixit’s model. It is shown that depending on the specification of the collection cost function and the size of government spending in GDP, collection lags may increase, leave unchanged, or reduce the desired rate of inflation.

The purpose of the present study is to review these concepts and to estimate consistent series of potential output in manufacturing for Canada, the United States, Japan, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Sweden for the period 1955–1975. Potential output series are also projected for the medium term (1976–1978) based on forecasts of available resources. The production function method is selected as the best approach to derive potential output series. The function used in the paper is a modified Cobb–Douglas function that allows for economies of scale and cyclical variations in the intensity of use of employed labor and of the capital stock. The study concludes that the rate of growth of potential output in manufacturing is now lower in most industrial countries than it was in the late 1960s. However, the fall is not as large as is often claimed, so that the output gaps early in 1976 were extremely high in all the major industrial countries. The principal reasons for the slowdown in the rate of growth of potential output are the lower rate of capital accumulation and the reduction of the normal workweek, rather than the direct effect of the increase in the price of energy.

When there are collection lags in the tax system, inflation reduces the real revenues. This is often offered as an argument for less reliance on the inflation tax. But the optimal rates of other taxes should also be reconsidered in the light of collection lags. When this is done, the focus shifts from the revenues (which can be recouped by changing the rates of these taxes), to the associated costs of collection. In a benchmark case where the average costs of collection are constant, the optimal inflation tax is independent of the collection lag.

Over the past fifteen years, a significant number of industrialized and middle-income countries have adopted inflation targeting as a framework for monetary policymaking. As the name suggests, in such inflation-targeting regimes, the central bank is responsible for achieving a publicly announced target for the inflation rate. While the objective of controlling inflation enjoys wide support among both academic experts and policymakers, and while the countries that have followed this model have generally experienced good macroeconomic outcomes, many important questions about inflation targeting remain. In Inflation Targeting, a distinguished group of contributors explores the many underexamined dimensions of inflation targeting—its potential, its successes, and its limitations—from both a theoretical and an empirical standpoint, and for both developed and emerging economies. The volume opens with a discussion of the optimal formulation of inflation-targeting policy and continues with a debate about the desirability of such a model for the United States. The concluding chapters discuss the special problems of inflation targeting in emerging markets, including the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary.

Trade liberalization in developing countries is frequently opposed on the grounds that, because it is likely to cause a deterioration in the external balance, it may not be a viable policy option for countries facing foreign exchange constraints. Recent literature suggests, however, an ambiguous relationship between tariff changes and the current account. This paper shows that if liberalization involves reducing tariffs on imported intermediate inputs (a reform that has figured prominently in developing countries), then the current account may improve or deteriorate, depending on the level of initial trade distortions and the structure of the economy.[JEL F13, F32, F41]

Optimal tax design attempts to resolve a well-known trade-off: namely, that high taxes are bad insofar as they discourage people from working, but good to the degree that, by redistributing wealth, they help insure people against productivity shocks. Until recently, however, economic research on this question either ignored people's uncertainty about their future productivities or imposed strong and unrealistic functional form restrictions on taxes. In response to these problems, the new dynamic public finance was developed to study the design of optimal taxes given only minimal restrictions on the set of possible tax instruments, and on the nature of shocks affecting people in the economy. In this book, Narayana Kocherlakota surveys and discusses this exciting new approach to public finance. An important book for advanced PhD courses in public finance and macroeconomics, The New Dynamic Public Finance provides a formal connection between the problem of dynamic optimal taxation and dynamic principal-agent contracting theory. This connection means that the properties of solutions to principal-agent problems can be used to determine the properties of optimal tax systems. The book shows that such optimal tax systems necessarily involve asset income taxes, which may depend in sophisticated ways on current and past labor incomes. It also addresses the implications of this new approach for qualitative properties of optimal monetary policy, optimal government debt policy, and optimal bequest taxes. In addition, the book describes computational methods for approximate calculation of optimal taxes, and discusses possible paths for future research.

When there are collection lags in the tax system, inflation reduces the real revenues. This is often offered as an argument for less reliance on the inflation tax. But the optimal rates of other taxes should also be reconsidered in the light of collection lags. When this is done, the focus shifts from the revenues (which can be recouped by changing the rates of these taxes), to the associated costs of collection. In a benchmark case where the average costs of collection are constant, the optimal inflation tax is independent of the collection lag.