In federal countries, such as the United States, state and local governments play an important role. They provide many different types of local public goods and services and are able to tailor the amount and quality of these goods to the preferences of their constituencies. To provide these services, state and local governments must raise tax revenues from their residents using a menu of differ...

The choice of how much of society’s income to consume today and how much to save for future consumption is among the most important economic decisions. It can have implications not only for the well-being of the households taking the decisions, but also for the rate at which the economy invests and grows, and therefore the well-being of future generations. The way in which savings decisions are...

BACKGROUND Diabetes is a costly and debilitating disease. The aim of the study is to quantify the individual and national costs of diabetes resulting from people retiring early because of this disease, including lost income; lost income taxation, increased government welfare payments; and reductions in GDP. METHODS A purpose-built microsimulation model, Health&WealthMOD2030, was used to estim...

It is argued that from the viewpoint of efficiency, agriculture should not be taxed relative to other sectors, and neither should it be favored. Nevertheless, developing countries have traditionally taxed the agricultural sector while developed countries have protected it, and both have incurred efficiency losses. Based on Schiff and Valdes (1992), it was shown that the taxation of agriculture ...

In China, alcohol consumption is increasing faster than anywhere else in the world. A steady increase in alcohol production has also been observed in the country, together with a rise in alcohol-related harm. Despite these trends, China's policies on the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages are weak compared with those of other countries in Asia. Weakest of all are its policies on taxati...

This paper analyses Indonesia’s resource mobilisation and public expenditure policies against the backdrop of her inequality trends and macroeconomic policy evolution. It is argued that the country’s fiscal policy stance has been adversely impacted by her monetary and financial sector policies under an open capital account, with attendant regressive distributional implications. Juxtaposing the ...

This article assesses the effects of comprehensive tobacco control policies on diverse subpopulations of girls and women who are at increased vulnerability to tobacco use because of disadvantage. The authors report on a recent assessment of experimental literature examining tobacco taxation; smoking location restrictions in public and private spaces; and sales restrictions. A comprehensive sear...

This paper uses a spatially disaggregated computable general equilibrium model of a large US metropolitan area to compare two kinds of policies, “Live Near Your Work” and taxation of vehicular travel, that have been proposed to help further the aims of “smart growth.” Ordinarily, policy comparisons of this sort focus on the net benefits of the two policies; that is, the total monetized net welf...

The supply of non-cash remuneration: Employer responses Michael Lyons and Will Ward University of Western Sydney This paper compares and contrasts the federal Coalition government’s system of taxing non-cash remuneration with its industrial relations system based on agreement making between employers and employees. It was anticipated that synergies between the two policies would be detected bec...

BACKGROUND As part of the efforts to curb obesity, a new focus seems to be put on taxing foods that are perceived as being associated with obesity (eg, sugar-sweetened beverages and foods high in fat, sugar, and salt content) as a policy instrument to promote healthier diets. OBJECTIVE To assess the possible effects of such taxation policies by identifying and analyzing all studies which inve...