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United States.

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There are only a few OECD Member countries with a lower tax take than the United States. Nonetheless there are a number of improvements that could help reduce the distortions that taxation creates in the economy and so boost long-run economic performance. The most noticeable gains could come from reforming the taxation of the income from capital. Savings are not always allocated to the area where they have the highest return, as there are large variations in the tax on capital income depending on the sector in which it is invested and the financing instruments that are used. In addition, taxation of capital income favours present over future consumption with a negative impact on savings and capital accumulation. In the past, a number of proposals have been made to reduce the tax burden on saving, by replacing the income tax with a consumption tax. While in many ways this would be the best approach, it is would represent a major change in a system that has evolved gradually ...

Economics --- United States

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America’s higher education system is among the best in the world. Nevertheless, there is scope for improvement. In particular, there appear to be substantial financial barriers to higher education despite large government expenditures aimed at promoting access. Policy makers have proposed addressing these barriers by increasing student grants. However, grants are costly, inefficient, inequitable and ineffective. Income tax concessions and state government subsidies suffer from similar problems. In contrast, international best practice seems to be converging on student loans with repayments that vary according to income. Income-contingent loans facilitate access to college at low fiscal cost and without the inefficiency and inequities that accompany grants, subsidies or tax concessions. At the same time, they do not discourage risk-averse or uninformed students in the way that conventional loans do. The United States has an income-contingent loan programme that should be expanded. While the design of repayments could be improved, the main problem with this programme is that lending limits are too low. Higher limits, especially for unsubsidised direct loans, would benefit students and promote access at little cost to the government. Were a good system of loans in place, then less cost-effective means of promoting access, such as grants and tax concessions, should be cut back.

Economics --- United States

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In many industries, competition is far from perfect and managerial efficiency (or a fixed cost) varies among firms. However, traditional measurement of technological progress assumes perfect competition and no fixed cost. This paper incorporates these two factors in the technological-progress measurement and investigates the biases caused by their omission. We show that if capital growth exceeds non-capital-input growth and that firms earn a positive pure profit, then traditional measurement underestimates the true technological progress. We apply this methodology to Japanese and US industries, and find that imperfect competition and managerial efficiency are important. However, the magnitude of the bias is not large ...

Economics --- Japan --- United States

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This paper uses the OECD's economic model, INTERLINK, to examine the consequences of eliminating the U.S. federal government deficit. Such action could lead to either lower real interest rates, lower inflation rates or a smaller current account deficit, depending on the stance of monetary policy. The elimination of the U.S. Federal deficit over the medium term could significantly lower the U.S. inflation rate and improve the current account deficit, if nominal interest rates were held constant in the face of falling inflation rates. In the absence of a reduction in the fiscal deficit, a significant increase in interest rates would be necessary to achieve the same reduction in the inflation rate. If, however, policy tightening is not necessary to contain inflation, a reduction in the fiscal deficit might be accompanied by a fall in nominal and real interest rates. In this case, a reduction in the fiscal deficit would not necessarily result in an improvement in the current account ...

Economics --- United States