This paper investigates the determinants of political support for the privatization of education in the UK. The electorate is assumed to apply cost-benefit calculations, depending on their circumstances; a set of criteria for evaluating educational reforms is linked to individual voters' characteristics. It is then possible to identify which voters would oppose or advocate educational reforms s...

We evaluate the effect of a 2003 reform in the Spanish income tax on fertility and the employment of mothers with small children. The reform introduced a tax credit for working mothers with children under the age of three, while also increasing child deductions for all households with children. Theoretically, given the interplay of these two components, the expected effect of the reform is ambi...

This chapter presents a historical and theoretical overview of the public finance in general and for developing countries in particular. The chapter highlights that modern governments need revenue and often a lot more revenue than they needed in the past, to provide the levels of assistance and public services that modern societies expect governments to provide. However, because of the various ...

Macroeconomic studies of tax policy in dynamic general equilibrium usually assume that reforms hit the economy unexpectedly and last forever. Here, we explore how previous results change when we allow policy changes to be pre-announced and of finite duration and when these facts are anticipated by households and firms. Quantitatively we demonstrate a headstart advantage from pre-announcement th...

In recent years African countries have faced a barrage of policy advice backed with financial support from development partners urging them to implement ‘good governance’ reforms. Good governance has come to mean support for improving the enforcement of property rights, the rule of law, fighting corruption and improving accountability. These reforms have enjoyed broad support because many of th...

Technical abstract The paper uses an applied general equilibrium model, calibrated to the situation in Belgium in 1990, to evaluate the welfare effects of small policy changes in the presence of transport externalities. The model incorporates three types of externalities: congestion, which has a feedback effect on the behaviour of the economic agents, air pollution and accidents. The model is u...

Taxing internationally mobile factors of production has been dismissed as an inefficient means of raising tax revenue. This paper addresses the question of whether it is efficient to tax capital at source when labor markets and the taxation of lumpsum income suffer from imperfections. Four reasons for taxing capital are identified: (i) institutional constraints rendering any taxation of profit ...

Health care system reform covers a disparate and controversial array of issues, a characteristic apparent in the related literature. The literature on proposed system reforms appears to be strongly driven by the actual public policy environment in Washington. Many articles discussing tax credits and reform proposals constructed using tax credits were published during the time when the Bush Admi...

kazakhstan was the last soviet republic to declare independence. but after the soviet collapse, the country seeks to rebuild its national identity and make economic reforms. changing political and economic structures in these countries due to its high dependence on moscow was not easy. in the early years of independence due to the asian financial crisis the country was faced with severe economi...