Taxation in Crisis ─ Tax Policy and the Quest for Economic Growth

This book offers a comprehensive guide to modern day taxation issues. It presents a thorough overview of many of the crucial aspects of applied taxation and current tax systems, and presents evidence that supports taxation as an important policy issue requiring immediate address globally.

Contributions seek to address the core question of how to design a tax policy mix that can serve primarily efficiency, growth and possibly equity goals at a time where fiscal spending, for many economies, is not a viable option. Chapters provide a historical perspective on taxation, then go on to cover aspects of the modern theory of optimal taxation and tax design and provide valuable international perspectives on current tax practices and much required tax reforms. Empirical analysis on taxation and related economic data help the readers to understand how data-based observations and results are linked to the theory of taxation, and more importantly economic growth, before offering appropriate policy prescriptions. This book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners interested in learning more about taxation and why it matters today in the global economy.

Dimitrios D. Thomakos is Professor of Applied Econometrics and Head of the Department of Economics at the University of Peloponnese, Greece, and Senior Fellow and Member of the Scientific Committee at the Rimini Center for Economic Analysis in Italy. Dimitrios holds an MA, MPhil and PhD from the Department of Economics of Columbia University, US. His research work has appeared in several prestigious international journals in economics and finance such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Canadian Journal of Economics, the Review of International Economics and many others.

Konstantinos (Kostas) I. Nikolopoulos is Professor of Decision Sciences at Bangor Business School, UK. He is also the Director of forLAB, a forecasting laboratory, and the Director of Research for the College of Business, Law, Education and Social Sciences. He received both his Engineering Doctorate Diploma in Electrical and his Computer Engineering (MEng)