Equalization and the Decentralization of Revenue-Raising in a Federation

We study federal economies in which regional governments have responsibility for delivering public services and redistributive objectives apply. The implications of these for the assignment of revenue-raising instruments and fiscal transfers, both vertical and horizontal, are considered. Models of heterogenous regions of varying degrees of complexity and generality are constructed. For each case, we determine what fiscal instruments must be given to the regions and what inter-governmental transfers must be made in order that the social optimum is achieved. With heterogenous households and regions, the social optimum can be decentralized by making regions responsible for redistribution and implementing equalization transfers that depend on the number of households of each type.

Maximizing Welfare in Social Networks under a Utility Driven Influence Diffusion Model

Motivated by applications such as viral marketing, the problem of influence maximization (IM) has been extensively studied in the literature. The goal is to select a small number of users to adopt an item such that it results in a large cascade of adoptions by others. Existing works have three key limitations. (1) They do not account for economic considerations of a user in buying/adopting items. (2) Most studies on multiple items focus on competition, with complementary items receiving limited attention. (3) For the network owner, maximizing social welfare is important to ensure customer loyalty, which is not addressed in prior work in the IM literature. In this paper, we address all three limitations and propose a novel model called UIC that combines utility-driven item adoption with influence propagation over networks. Focusing on the mutually complementary setting, we formulate the problem of social welfare maximization in this novel setting. We show that while the objective function is neither submodular nor supermodular, surprisingly a simple greedy allocation algorithm achieves a factor of $(1-1/e-\epsilon)$ of the optimum expected social welfare. We develop \textsf{bundleGRD}, a scalable version of this approximation algorithm, and demonstrate, with comprehensive experiments on real and synthetic datasets, that it significantly outperforms all baselines.Comment: 33 page

"Fiscal Equalization in Japan: Assessment and Recommendations"

Intergovernmental fiscal relations in Japan have been strained in recent years. This paper seeks to assess the Japanese equalization transfer in the light of the theory of fiscal federalism. This paper argues that the case for equalization lies in offsetting net fiscal benefit (NFB) differentials across jurisdictions. It has been shown that the case for equalization and its design depend on the type of public good being provided as well as the mode of finance. Moreover, where equalization is called for, its form and level can be very different depending on whether the relevant policy goal is that of fiscal equity or fiscal efficiency. Studying the institutional context, we arrive at the conclusion that the system of equalization transfers in Japan is consistent with the application of those principles.

Fundamentale Steuerreformen für Deutschland: die Unternehmensteuerreform 2008, die Duale Einkommensteuer und die Einheitssteuer im Vergleich

In den letzten Jahren wurde eine Vielzahl an Steuerreformvorschlägen in Deutschland unterbreitet. Zu den aktuellen gehören neben der Unternehmensteuerreform 2008 (UntSt-Reform), die Duale Einkommensteuer des Sachverständigenrates (DIT) und die Kirchhof'sche Einheitssteuer. Dieser Aufsatz quantifiziert und vergleicht die gesamtwirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen dieser Steuerreformvorschläge mithilfe des eigens für Deutschland entwickelten dynamischen, allgemeinen Gleichgewichtsmodells ifoMod. Wie die Ergebnisse zeigen, bewirken die DIT und die Einheitssteuer einen positiven Impuls auf das Wirtschaftswachstum, während sich die UntSt-Reform als leichte Wachstumsbremse herausstellt. Im Hinblick auf die Wohlfahrtsaspekte der Reformen erzielt lediglich die DIT positive Resultate. Die UntSt-Reform hemmt insbesondere die Investitionstätigkeit der Kapitalgesellschaften, da diese Unternehmen mit Einführung der Abgeltungssteuer auf Dividenden und Wertzuwächse einer Doppelbesteuerung unterliegen. Dennoch generiert diese als einzige Reform einen langfristigen Finanzierungsüberschuss.The past years have seen several tax reform proposals being put forward in Germany. The most prominent ones count the Business Tax Reform 2008 (BTR 2008), the Dual Income Tax (DIT) proposal advanced by the German Council of Economic Advisors and Kirchhof's flat tax. We analyze, compare and quantify the effects of these reform proposals by applying ifoMOD, a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. ifoMOD was in particular developed to simulate the effects of capital income tax reforms for the German economy. The simulation results show that both the DIT and the flat tax have a positive stimulus for economic growth while the BTR 2008 slightly impedes growth. Regarding the welfare effects of the reforms, the DIT is the only reform proposal which achieves positive results. The BTR 2008 impedes in particular the investment activity of corporate firms since these are effectively subject to double taxation following the introduction of a withholding tax on dividends and capital gains. Nevertheless, this reform proposal is the only one which generates a financing surplus in the long run

Priority for the Worse Off and the Social Cost of Carbon

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a monetary measure of the harms from carbon emission. Specifically, it is the reduction in current consumption that produces a loss in social welfare equivalent to that caused by the emission of a ton of CO2. The standard approach is to calculate the SCC using a discounted-utilitarian social welfare function (SWF)—one that simply adds up the well-being numbers (utilities) of individuals, as discounted by a weighting factor that decreases with time. The discounted-utilitarian SWF has been criticized both for ignoring the distribution of well-being, and for including an arbitrary preference for earlier generations. Here, we use a prioritarian SWF, with no time-discount factor, to calculate the SCC in the integrated assessment model RICE. Prioritarianism is a well-developed concept in ethics and theoretical welfare economics, but has been, thus far, little used in climate scholarship. The core idea is to give greater weight to well-being changes affecting worse off individuals. We find substantial differences between the discounted-utilitarian and non-discounted prioritarian SCC

Constraints on profit income distribution and production efficiency in private ownership economies with Ramsey taxation

Author's draft published as discussion paper by University of Exeter Department of Economics. The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comIn economies with Ramsey taxation, decreasing returns to scale, and private ownership, we show that second-best production efficiency is desirable when the grouping of private firms induced by the profit taxation power of the government is at least as fine as the grouping of firms induced by the institutional rules of profit distribution in the economy. The classic results of Dasgupta and Stiglitz [1972] (of firm-specific profit taxation) and Diamond and Mirrlees [1971] and Guesnerie [1995] (of uniform one-hundred percent profit taxation) follow as special cases of our model. Moreover, second-best analysis shows that optimal profit taxation is a substitute for optimal intermediate input taxation. In smooth economies, proportional, lump-sum, and affine modes of profit taxation are equivalent. We rework Mirrlees [1972] counterexample, which is posed in the context of a non-smooth economy, to show that second-best production efficiency continues to remain desirable under an affine structure of profit taxation

Federal Transfers and Fiscal Discipline in India: An Empirical Evaluation

This article examines the relationship between federal transfers and fiscal deficits in India. The current system of transfers has been criticized on the grounds that it distorts the incentives for states to promote fiscal discipline. We analyze the relationship between transfers, state domestic product, and fiscal deficit for a panel of states during the period 1990 to 2010. The article finds a positive long-run relationship and bidirectional causality between primary/gross fiscal deficits and non-plan transfers. Further, there is a negative long-run relationship and one-way causality from state domestic product to transfers. These results are confirmed by multivariate cointegration analysis, which finds a long-run relationship between fiscal transfers, state product per capita, and state primary deficit. The evidence in the article is consistent with the system of fiscal transfers being ‘‘gap filling.’

Competition for the International Pool of Talent

Developed countries increasingly compete for a pool of talented students from developing countries. This competition induces host countries to vertically di§erentiate their education programmes: some countries supply a higher educational quality and charge higher tuition fees, while others provide a lower quality for lower tuition fees. This paper argues that the educational quality of high-quality countries, the national tuition fees and the quality and tuition fee di§erentials between the countries all increase as the income prospects for graduates in the developing countries catch up with the developed world and the number of international students grows. If foreign students become more likely to stay in their host country after graduation, the implications will be more ambiguous. In particular, an increase in educational quality can be accompanied by a decline in tuition fees. IntensiÖed competition for international students does not necessarily disadvantage developing countries, since they might even beneÖt from a brain gain