In the 1980s and '90s many countries turned to the private sector to provide infrastructure and utilities, such as gas, telephones, and highways--with the idea that market-based incentives would control costs and improve the quality of essential services. But subsequent debacles including the collapse of California's wholesale electricity market and the bankruptcy of Britain's largest railroad company have raised troubling questions about privatization. This book addresses one of the most vexing of these: how can government fairly and effectively regulate "natural monopolies"--those infrastructure and utility services whose technologies make competition impractical?

Rather than sticking to economics, Jose Gomez-Ibanez draws on history, politics, and a wealth of examples to provide a road map for various approaches to regulation. He makes a strong case for favoring market-oriented and contractual approaches--including private contracts between infrastructure providers and customers as well as concession contracts with the government acting as an intermediary--over those that grant government regulators substantial discretion. Contracts can provide stronger protection for infrastructure customers and suppliers--and greater opportunities to tailor services to their mutual advantage. In some cases, however, the requirements of the firms and their customers are too unpredictable for contracts to work, and alternative schemes may be needed.

Durch Qualitatsmanagement konnen Sie Prozesse und Leistungen in Ihrer Kanzlei erheblich verbessern. Fehlerquellen werden beseitigt und wertvolle Arbeitszeit eingespart, wenn die internen Ablaufe optimal organisiert sind. Vorteile zieht daraus nicht nur Ihre Kanzlei, sondern insbesondere auch Ihr Mandant, so dass die Sicherung der Qualitat zugleich der Sicherung Ihres Mandantenstammes dient.
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In evaluating environmental policy, researchers have tended to focus on the industry or market that is targeted by regulation and to disregard policy impacts in other parts of the economy. Recent research indicates, however, that in economies where governments rely on distortionary taxes, environmental regulation can profoundly affect costs and efficiency in areas other than the targeted industry or market. These findings signal the importance of evaluating environmental policy using a general equilibrium framework - an approach that can capture interactions across industries, sectors or markets. General equilibrium analysis can fundamentally alter the evaluation of environmental tax policies, and can overturn conventional wisdom concerning the relative cost-effectiveness of environmental taxes, emissions quotas, or mandated technologies. This volume gathers together important papers on the general equilibrium impacts of environmental regulation in the presence of distortionary taxes. Topics include optimal environmental taxation,'green tax reform' and the 'double dividend', and the choice among alternative policy instruments. The volume will be of interest to environmental economists, public finance economists and researchers interested in the economics of regulation.

The new edition of a popular guide to the key issues in tax reform, presented in a clear, nontechnical, and unbiased way. To follow the debate over tax reform, the interested citizen is often forced to choose between misleading sound bites and academic treatises. Taxing Ourselves bridges the gap between the oversimplified and the arcane, presenting the key issues clearly and without a political agenda. Tax policy experts Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija lay out in accessible language what is known and not known about how taxes affect the economy and offer guidelines for evaluating tax systems-both the current tax system and proposals to reform it. This fifth edition has been extensively revised to incorporate the latest data, empirical evidence, and tax law. It offers new material on recent tax reform proposals, expanded coverage of international tax issues, and the latest enforcement initiatives. Offering historical perspectives, outlining the basic criteria by which tax policy should be judged (fairness, economic impact, enforceability), examining proposals for both radical change (replacement of the income tax with a flat tax or consumption tax) and incremental changes to the current system, and concluding with a voter's guide, the book provides readers with enough background to make informed judgments about how we should tax ourselves. Praise for earlier editions "An excellent book." -Jeff Medrick, New York Times "A fair-minded exposition of a politically loaded subject." -Kirkus Reviews

The twin benefits of improving environmental quality and reducing tax distortions through the recycling of environmental tax proceeds prove an attractive policy objective. This book analyses the use of the double dividend concepts for evaluating ecological tax reforms. The author aims to analyse unilateral environmental policy measures thoroughly and to assess under which conditions a double dividend can be achieved. The analysis is undertaken in the context of international capital mobility and cross-border externalities. He also includes a discussion of an empirically relevant example for an ecological tax reform scenario in Germany - the DIW proposal. International Environmental Externalities and the Double Dividend will be of great interest to all researchers and those working in NGOs in the areas of environmental economics, ecological tax reform issues as well as trade and the environment.

When thirteen machine shop workers from Ohio won a $295.7 million lotto jackpot, the largest ever, it made headlines. But the real story is that the lottery is a losing proposition for the vast majority who play it.

Hitting the Lottery Jackpot provides the hard truth to the questions everybody asks: What are my chances of winning? Doesn't the money go to education? Isn't it harmless? This concise book explains who really profits from lotteries-advertising agencies, TV stations, and ticket vendors-and that shows only about half the money wagered is returned as prizes, the rest pocketed by state governments. Hitting the Lottery Jackpot also demonstrates who loses: lower-income groups and people of color, who spend a much higher percentage of their income on lotteries than others.

David Nibert connects the rise of lotteries, illegal in every state before the 1960s, to the economic stagnation beginning in the 1970s, when budgetary crises prompted legislatures to seek new revenues. Difficult economic times produced uncertainty and anxiety for the working class, leading many poor and middle-income people, yearning for security, to throw away huge sums on lotteries they stand almost no chance of winning. Finally, Nibert explores the ideological dimensions of the lottery-the get-rich-quick individualism that they promote among the very groups who would be better served by political action and solidarity.

Hitting the Lottery Jackpot is a powerful case for seeing lotteries as a pernicious government tax on the poor, seductively disguised as fun.

This book is concerned with some of the conceptual and practical problems of measuring the changes in welfare of individuals and the excess burdens arising from taxation. It provides an introductory review of alternative concepts and practical approaches to the measurement of welfare as well as providing a number of practical examples of welfare analyses in a variety of contexts. The excess burden of a tax is a central concept in economics. John Creedy provides an introduction to various concepts of welfare change, paying particular attention to the measurement issues involved. He then applies the methods outlined to the measurement of marginal tax reform and indirect tax reform, with empirical data taken from Australia. He also examines the redistributive effect of price changes in Australia between 1980 and 1995, and the effects of inflation in New Zealand over the period 1993-1995. Finally, he calculates the welfare costs of monopoly and measures the burdens of carbon taxation and welfare. Measuring Welfare Changes and Tax Burdens will be of interest to students and academics working in the areas of public finance and public policy, as well as economists working in government.

A comprehensive, in-depth, and authoritative guide to China's financial system The Chinese economy is one of the most important in the world, and its success is driven in large part by its financial system. Though closely scrutinized, this system is poorly understood and vastly different than those in the West. The Handbook of China's Financial System will serve as a standard reference guide and invaluable resource to the workings of this critical institution. The handbook looks in depth at the central aspects of the system, including banking, bonds, the stock market, asset management, the pension system, and financial technology. Each chapter is written by leading experts in the field, and the contributors represent a unique mix of scholars and policymakers, many with firsthand knowledge of setting and carrying out Chinese financial policy. The first authoritative volume on China's financial system, this handbook sheds new light on how it developed, how it works, and the prospects and direction of significant reforms to come. Contributors include Franklin Allen, Marlene Amstad, Kaiji Chen, Tuo Deng, Hanming Fang, Jin Feng, Tingting Ge, Kai Guo, Zhiguo He, Yiping Huang, Zhaojun Huang, Ningxin Jiang, Wenxi Jiang, Chang Liu, Jun Ma, Yanliang Mao, Fan Qi, Jun Qian, Chenyu Shan, Guofeng Sun, Xuan Tian, Chu Wang, Cong Wang, Tao Wang, Wei Xiong, Yi Xiong, Tao Zha, Bohui Zhang, Tianyu Zhang, Zhiwei Zhang, Ye Zhao, Julie Lei Zhu, and Ning Zhu.

Olga Sava untersucht, welche Leitlinien der Ausgestaltung des Steuerrechts zugrunde zu legen sind und wurdigt anhand dieser Besteuerungsgrundsatze den Dualismus der Einkunftsarten, der als unterschiedliche steuerliche Behandlung von Gewinn- und Uberschusseinkunftsarten verstanden wird."

Taxation in Colonial America examines life in the thirteen original American colonies through the revealing lens of the taxes levied on and by the colonists. Spanning the turbulent years from the founding of the Jamestown settlement to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Alvin Rabushka provides the definitive history of taxation in the colonial era, and sets it against the backdrop of enormous economic, political, and social upheaval in the colonies and Europe. Rabushka shows how the colonists strove to minimize, avoid, and evade British and local taxation, and how they used tax incentives to foster settlement. He describes the systems of public finance they created to reduce taxation, and reveals how they gained control over taxes through elected representatives in colonial legislatures. Rabushka takes a comprehensive look at the external taxes imposed on the colonists by Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, as well as internal direct taxes like poll and income taxes. He examines indirect taxes like duties and tonnage fees, as well as county and town taxes, church and education taxes, bounties, and other charges. He links the types and amounts of taxes with the means of payment--be it gold coins, agricultural commodities, wampum, or furs--and he compares tax systems and burdens among the colonies and with Britain. This book brings the colonial period to life in all its rich complexity, and shows how colonial attitudes toward taxation offer a unique window into the causes of the revolution.