Modern Fiscal Issues : Essays in Honour of Carl S. Shoup

The contributors to this work, all leading economists in their own right, are a few of the many colleagues, former students, and friends of Carl Shoup who have benefitted from his many years as a leading teacher and scholar of public finance. They dedicate this book to their mentor on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, in recognition of his intellectual probity and wide influence on thinking about public finance throughout the last forty years. Matching the breadth of interest of Professor Shoup’s life-long work in the field, this collection of essays covers the range of modern thinking on public finance from theoretical concepts such as public goods to eminently practical fiscal issues like value added tax. The traditional but still relevant fiscal issues—government accounting, international taxation, taxation in developing countries, metropolitan fiscal problems, income taxation, and tax structure—are discussed along with new concerns such as modern public expenditure theory and environmental theory. The book will be a useful addition to university and college libraries and will prove invaluable to public finance scholars and others interested in modern thinking on vital fiscal issues. The contributors to this work, all leading economists in their own right, are a few of the many colleagues, former students, and friends of Carl Shoup who have benefitted from his many years as a leading teacher and scholar of public finance. They dedicate this book to their mentor on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, in recognition of his intellectual probity and wide influence on thinking about public finance throughout the last forty years. Matching the breadth of interest of Professor Shoup's life-long work in the field, this collection of essays covers the range of modern thinking on public finance from theoretical concepts such as public goods to eminently practical fiscal issues like value added tax. The traditional but still relevant fiscal issues--government accounting, international taxation, taxation in developing countries, metropolitan fiscal problems, income taxation, and tax structure--are discussed along with new concerns such as modern public expenditure theory and environmental theory. The book will be a useful addition to university and college libraries and will prove invaluable to public finance scholars and others interested in modern thinking on vital fiscal issues Contents 5 Preface 7 Contributors 9 ONE. The theory of public finance 13 1. Public goods: the polar case 13 2. Joint production, externality, and public goods 28 3. The design of governments 55 4. Inter-nation equity 73 5. Customs unions, tax unions, development unions 96 6. Tax neutrality of instantaneous versus economic depreciation 115 7. Cumulative averaging after thirty years 127 TWO. Public finance in practice 147 8. Government revenue, the national income, and all that 147 9. Scale and effectiveness of urban government: a commentary 174 10. Environmental quality, the market, and public finance 197 11. The German Stabilization Law: a new experiment 235 12. The logical approach of the new estate duty in Great Britain 257 13. Ecuador's value added tax: the first in the Andean Common Market 267 14. Technical assistance in taxation in developing countries 288 15. Property taxation 302 16. The evolution of sales taxation, 1915-1972 328 Bibliography: works of Carl S. Shoup 355