Recent legal and economic scholarship has recognized that the government can use structural systems as an efficient way to reduce prohibited behavior. The federal tax system employs structural mechanisms, such as withholding taxes, to foster compliance. The use of structural systems to reduce tax evasion need not be limited to tax administration, however. The Article…
In the last two decades, the dominant norm in fundamental tax reform has shifted from income taxation to consumption taxation, among academics no less than policymakers. Few have recognized, however, that the case for a consumption tax overlaps substantially with that for lifetime income averaging, an idea that has drawn considerably less support. In particular,…
We appreciate the opportunity to comment on Dan Shaviro's important piece on how the permanent income hypothesis relates to tax policy. In this piece, Shaviro points out that the arguments in favor of a consumption tax on the one hand, and income averaging on the other, raise significantly related issues. As far as we know,…
In advancing his prospect theory of patents, Edmund Kitch dismissed the possibility of distributing rights to particular inventions through auctions, arguing that the patent system avoids the need for governmental officials to define the boundaries of inventions that have not yet been created. Auctions for patent rights to entire inventive fields, however, might accentuate the…
Patent thickets may inefficiently retard cumulative innovation. This Article explores two alternative mechanisms that may be used to weed out patent thickets. Both mechanisms are intended to reduce the number of patents in our society. The first mechanism we discuss is price-based regulation of patents through a system of increasing renewal fees. The second and…
