Suchergebnisse

In this paper the major criteria that determine the economist's perspectives on tax reform are examined. The assumptions, the implications, and the interrelationships of equity, efficiency, simplicity, and effectiveness are considered, and the question is asked as to whether these criteria together constitute a theory of tax reform. Distinguishing between tax design, which largely abstracts from the practical considerations of political decisionmaking and public acceptance, and tax reform, which confronts these realities, it is concluded that economic criteria by themselves do not constitute a theory of tax reform. Tax reform, it is argued, is essentially concerned with structural changes in a tax system that are achievable in a given set of circumstances. Of necessity, economic criteria often have to be balanced against political judgments about the public acceptability of proposals. Of equal importance, it is shown that second-best choices are inevitable, even in the context of pure tax-design, simply because of the conflicts between the various criteria and the impossibility of meeting the informational requirements of optimal choices. It is also noted that, in the absence of a common denominator, trade-offs between different criteria remain essentially arbitrary.

Unlike other political leaders, leaders coming to power through military coups face a dual legitimation challenge: they must justify not only why they should rule but also how they came to power. Little attention has been paid to how coup leaders solve this legitimacy deficit and even less to the audiences of this legitimation. We ask: why do some coup leaders legitimate their coups by holding elections while others do not? Counterintuitively, we argue that coup leaders who oust democratically elected leaders are less likely to hold elections, except when tied to US military aid. We test these hypotheses through a data set of military coup regimes from 1946 to 2014 and trace out mechanisms through case studies of the Nigerian coup of 1983 and the Egyptian coup of 2013. This argument provides a new explanation for the emergence of authoritarian elections and a new perspective on the international dimensions of dictatorship.

In this paper the implications of locational surplus, defined as the benefits a citizen perceives as accruing to him/her by remaining in his/her present jurisdiction rather than migrating to another jurisdiction, are examined with respect to the traditional view that redistributive policies cannot be carried out effectively by subnational governments. Whether responsibility for redistributive policies should be assigned to national or to subnational governments is shown to depend on the extent to which there are disparities in economic and social conditions among subnational jurisdictions on the one hand, and on the extent to which distributional preferences differ among jurisdictions on the other.