Another new publication

Yet another article that I wrote for a conference a couple of years ago is now on the verge of coming out. In "Simplifying Assumptions: How Might the Politics of Consumption Tax Reform Affect (Impair) the End Product?" I try to examine the political economy scenarios that would be necessary for a consumption tax to be enacted replacing the current income tax. I was asked by the conference organizers to assume that such a thing would actually happen, notwithstanding my skepticism on this point. I reach fairly pessimistic conclusions about whether the instrument that actually passed Congress would be something to feel terribly good about.

I certainly can't complain about how long it took the conference volume to come out, given that another roughly contemporaneous conference volume that Alan Auerbach and I are co-editing is taking even longer. (This is a book to be entitled "Institutional Foundations of Public Finance," collecting some generally excellent papers from a conference held at NYU in May 2006 in honor of the late David F. Bradford. Coming out at some point this year from the Harvard University Press.)

The volume in which my "Simplifying Assumptions" paper is coming out is Fundamental Tax Reform: Issues, Choices, and Implications," edited by John W. Diamond and George R. Zodrow. It is available (for advance ordering) for $36 here or $45 here. (Which to buy? - sounds like a tough choice.)