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We explore the extent to which schools manipulate the composition of students in the test-taking pool in order to maximize ratings under Texas’ accountability system in the 1990s. We first derive predictions from a static model of administrators’ incentives given the structure of the ratings criteria, and then test these predictions by comparing differential changes in exemption rates across student subgroups within campuses and across campuses and regimes. Our analyses uncover evidence of a moderate degree of strategic behavior, so that there is some tension between designing systems that account for heterogeneity in student populations and that are manipulation-free.

Objective – The first wave of experiences of exemptions policies suggested that poverty-based exemptions, using individual targeting, were not effective, for practical and political economic reasons. In response, many countries have changed their approach in recent years – while maintaining user fees as a necessary source of revenue for facilities, they have been switching to categorical targeting, offering exemptions based on high-priority services or population groups. This chapter aims to examine the impact and conditions for effectiveness of this recent health finance modality.

Methodology/approach – The chapter is based on a literature review and on data from two complex evaluations of national fee exemption policies for delivery care in West Africa (Ghana and Senegal). A conceptual framework for analysing the impact of exemption policies is developed and used. Although the analysis focuses on exemption for deliveries, the framework and findings are likely to be generalisable to other service- or population-based exemptions.

Findings – The chapter presents background information on the nature of delivery exemptions, the drivers for their use, their scale and common modalities in low-income countries. It then looks at evidence of their impact, on utilisation, quality of care and equity and investigates their cost-effectiveness. The final section presents lessons on implementation and implications for policy-makers, including the acceptability and sustainability of exemptions and how they compare to other possible mechanisms.

Implications for policy – The chapter concludes that funded service- or group-based exemptions offer a simple, potentially effective route to mitigating inequity and inefficiency in the health systems of low-income countries. However, there are a number of key constraints. One is the fungibility of resources at health facility level. The second is the difficulty of sustaining a separate funding stream over the medium to long term. The third is the arbitrary basis for selecting high-priority services for exemption. The chapter therefore concludes that this financing mode is unstable and is likely to be transitional.

Much of the discussion surrounding the antivaccine movement focuses on the decision of parents to not vaccinate their children and the resulting danger posed to others. However, the primary risk is borne by the child left unvaccinated. Although living in a developed country with high vaccination rates provides a certain amount of protection through population immunity, the unvaccinated child is still exposed to a considerably greater risk of preventable diseases than one who is vaccinated. I explore the tension between parental choice and the child’s right to be free of preventable diseases. The chapter’s goal is twofold: to advocate for moving from a dyadic framework – considering the interests of the parents against those of the state – to a triadic one, in which the interests of the child are given as much weight as those of the parent and the state; and to discuss which protections are available, and how they can be improved. Specific legal tools available to protect that child are examined, including tort liability of the parents to the child, whether and to what degree criminal law has a role, under what circumstances parental choice should be overridden, and the role of school immunization requirements in protecting the individual child.

The competitiveness of companies and their capacity to join markets have changed as a result of the digital economy. One of the reasons the European Commission will revise the rules governing block exemptions for R&D agreements and begin consulting stakeholders in March 2022 is the impact of digitalisation on markets. This chapter looks into how digitalisation has impacted the competitive analysis and evaluation that Moldovan businesses and the competition authority must conduct when looking at R&D collaborations.

For the purposes of the research in this chapter, we used methods such as analysis, deduction, induction, and synthesis of conceptual approaches to the digitalization of the competitive assessment, to elucidate the factors influencing competitiveness in R&D agreements. We also assessed the situation in the Republic of Moldova to formulate conclusions and own opinions about how the introduction of new processes and products on the market will stimulate competition among national firms and will strengthen their ability to compete in regional or even international markets. The recommendations and proposals for improving the management of competence to encourage businesses to innovate collaborate and exchange knowledge to produce innovative goods and services, including green economy solutions and initiatives with the security to comply with a competition policy adapted to the requirements of the new economy, as well as to the new changes in the European competition policy.

Since the 1990s, the French government has offered tax exemptions for people who buy property and rent it out for at least nine years. This legal framework, centered on incentives, can be considered a new kind of (de)regulation of housing policy, triggering a multiplication of private intermediaries devoted to finding clients for tax exemptions. Based on interviews with 28 investors who feel they have been abused (many of them have started legal proceedings against professionals from whom they bought a property), this study provides a new entry for analyzing legal intermediation, showing that it does not affect all laypeople in the same way, especially when looking at the latter’s social and economic resources. We analyze how and with what devices professionals, whose commercial practices are not fully regulated by law, rely on the law for the success of their transactions, especially with taxpayers who have money to become investors but who are not rich enough to pay for the services of a tax professional. We argue that the ability to resist the appeal of putting money into investments that turned out risky depends on investors’ social and economic resources. Finally, we analyze how the process of legal intermediation described in this chapter impacts investors’ legal consciousness and creates distrust toward the law.

We use the 1995 IRS Public Use Tax File in simulation models to examine the factors associated with the widely anticipated growth in the alternative minimum tax (AMT). The evidence suggests that the changes in the marginal tax rate structure associated with the 2001 and 2003 tax legislation are likely to result in exponential growth in AMT incidence and create a substantial hidden marriage tax penalty, a result contradictory with the intent of these tax law changes. The evidence further suggests that the elimination of preferential long-term capital gain rates for the AMT could effectively fund structural changes in the AMT that would substantially reduce the impact of the AMT on middle and lower income taxpayers, many of whom are liable for the AMT due to the add-back for AMT purposes of such non-tax preferential items as Schedule A adjustments and personal and dependency exemptions.

Many existing studies point to the political contentiousness of attempts by states in the 19th century to impose property taxes, which after mid-century comprised the main source of state revenues. Yet studies fail to establish a convincing connection between interest group political effectiveness and resulting favorable property tax legislation. This paper takes a closer look at one state that adopted property taxation in the mid-19th century and documents intense inter-occupational conflicts between miners and ranchers over creation and administration of the system of property taxes. These conflicts occurred for various institutional reasons, including differential costs of enforcing tax collection and the short-lived political ascendance of miners during, and in the years following, the Gold Rush. The empirical results strongly suggest short-term capture by miners of the state legislature, followed by loss of capture ability as gold declined in economic importance in the 1860s.

The distributional impacts of replacing an income tax that has graduated marginal rates by a flat tax are complex. Typically the flat tax rate will be less than the top marginal rate under the pre-existing tax, leading to gains for the wealthiest. On the other hand, real-world proposals generally combine this with increases in personal exemptions that benefit some of the lowest income taxpayers. The result is that flat tax proposals usually redistribute from the middle to the extremes.