The Political Economy of Progressive Taxation

This volume presents papers which were given at a conference of the Liberty Fund, Washington, co-sponsored by the Carl-Menger Institute, Vienna. The conference took place in Vienna in January 1988. All papers were subject to a refereeing process; some of them had to be revised very extensively. The economics of progressive taxation have been a research topic ever since economists have dealt with the economic role of the state. Old puzzles are the best: the theoretical underpinning of progressivity still is not fully convincing, even after 200 years of economic research. In the present volume we succeeded in publishing some contributions of outstanding economists which present their visions of the topic. Niskanen distinguishes two types of contributions of public choice analysis to understanding and evaluating the tax and transfer system in modern economics: the positive analysis, which examines the issue of how a tax and transfer system would look if it were established by a government subject to majority rule; . and the normative analysis, which tries to discern an optimal system of taxes and transfers. In the normative case the author distinguishes between the "libertarian perspective", in which each person has full rights to any property that he has acquired legally and in which transfers are determined entirely by the preferences of the donors, and the so-called "constitutional perspective" , in which each person elects the rules affecting taxes without knowledge of his position in the post constitutional distribution.

Klappentext

The economics of progressive taxation have been a research topic ever since economists have dealt with the economic role of the state. Old puzzles are the best: the theoretical underpinning of progressivity still is not fully convincing, even after 200 years of economic research. In the present volume the editors succeed in publishing some of the contributions of outstanding economists which present their vision of the topic. This book presents: - Contributions to the political economy of the Laffer curve by outstanding international economists like Niskanen and Peacock - New theoretical assessments of optimal direct taxation and its influence on fairness of allocations and entrepreneurial behaviour - A theoretical and empirical evaluation of the shadow economy resulting from direct and indirect taxation.

Inhalt
Progressive Taxation and Demographic Government: A Public Choice Analysis.- Progressive Taxation: Models and Policies.- The Rise and Fall of the Laffer Curve.- On the Irrelevance of the Laffer Curve.- The International Consequences of Less Progressive Taxation.- Tax Reforms and International Mobility.- Equitability and Income Taxation.- A Political Philosopher's View of Equitable Taxation.- An Economists' View of Equitable Taxation.- Capital Markets, Entrepreneurship and Progressive Taxation.- Taxing Entrepreneurs: Models and Reality.- The Consequences of Progressive Income Taxation for the Shadow Economy: Some Theoretical Considerations.- The Consequences of Progressive Income Taxation for the Shadow Economy.- The Consequences of a Changing Shadow Economy for the Official Economy: Some Empirical Results for Austria.- Notes on Taxes and Tax Evasion in Austria.- Addresses of Authors.