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This Article analyzes the behavioral economics literatures on how individuals understand taxation (i.e., tax salience). We evaluate how taxpayers respond to different presentations of tax prices both in their roles as market participants and as voters. We aim to combat several naïve notions about tax salience that currently exert a pernicious influence on tax lawmaking. In particular, we argue that it is normatively desirable for governments to reduce tax salience with respect to market decision making, and that there is nothing normatively objectionable about governments also reducing tax salience with respect to political decision making.

The variable "issue salience" refers to the visibility or prominence of a given topic or theme occurring in the news coverage and is used to explore first-level agenda-setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). In addition to actor salience and valence, issue salience is analyzed to describe and explore the news coverage on different events and public debates. Mostly, issue salience is measured as the number of mentioning a particular issue, topic, or theme. Field of application/theoretical foundation: Issue salience is analyzed using content analysis across different subfields of communication and media research, including the field of public diplomacy. In public diplomacy research, scholars measure issue salience in the context of governmental communication on their official channels online and offline or the representation of countries in social or mass media. Researchers embed the concept of issue salience primarily in agenda-setting theory (McCombs & Shaw, 1972), analyzing it as an independent variable from which to derive implications of news media coverage on audiences' perceptions on a certain object or examining the relationship between issue salience in the media and the public agenda. References/combination with other methods of data collection: When it comes to analyses on issue salience and its link to public perceptions, a mixed-method study design incorporating content analysis in combination with surveys is used to validate issue salience. Example study: Zhou et al., 2013 Information about Zhou et al., 2013 Authors: Zhang et al. Research question/research interest: Comparison between news coverage on Great Britain (in terms of themes) in U.S.-American and Chinese news media during the Olympic Games 2012 RQ: What were the most salient themes in British, U.S., and Chinese media when they covered the opening ceremony of the London Olympics? Object of analysis: Newspaper (30 media outlets across three countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, and China, not explicated) Time frame of analysis: 24 ...

Eleven focal colors are named by basic color terms in many languages. The most salient colors (black, white, and perhaps red) are named in all languages; the least salient of the set are named in fewer languages. Salience correlates with earliness of introduction, as measured by a scale of social evolution; with brevity of expression, as measured by phonemic length of basic color terms; with frequency of use, as measured by frequency of basic color terms in literary languages; and with frequency of mention in ethnographic literature. None of these correlations are established in the pioneer study of Berlin and Kay (1969), a study whose defects are well exposed by Durbin (1972) and Wescott (1970). The first two were documented respectively in Naroll (1970) and Durbin (1972); the last two are documented here. These four correlations independently support the Berlin‐Kay color salience theory. They furnish a sound basis for further research on color term salience in particular and indeed on salience phenomena in general. We speculate that salience may be an important general principle of cultural evolution.

Motivated by current topics in health economics, we apply the theory of salience to consumer policy. If a government intends to stifle healthier diets without harming consumers by raising taxes, it could initiate information campaigns which focus consumers' attention either on the healthiness of one item or the unhealthiness of the other item. According to our approach, both campaigns work, but it is more efficient to proclaim the unhealthiness of one product in order to present it as a "bad." Our findings imply that comparative advertisement is particularly efficient for entrant firms into established markets.

This Article considers the second-best design of Pigouvian taxes and subsidies in the presence of agents who are imperfectly aware of the instrument. Until very recently, the price instrument literature has assumed perfect rationality, and even the handful of prior attempts to account for "hidden" prices focus mainly on the income tax. I extend these efforts in several directions. First, I show that the best available instrument for correcting negative externalities is often one whose price is partially adjusted upwards -- or, in the case of subsidies, downwards -- to counter-act the neglect of irrational actors. In addition, I argue that the salience of a price instrument can affect the choice between sticks and carrots, potentially making carrots a more viable option than is usually claimed in existing literature. I also address the cases of positive externalities, "hyper-salient" actors who are excessively attentive to price instruments, and combinations of each. Finally, I highlight evidence suggesting that the problem of imperfect awareness of price instruments is likely inevitable and widespread, implying that even if government does not intentionally set out to manipulate public awareness of its policies, salience will typically be an important factor in policy design.