ABSTRACT
The largest share of fiscal economics literature will continue to be occupied with taxation. This chapter focuses on the role of economists in each of the fiscal areas, with some comment on the extent to which the non-economists share the field. Taxing authorities have hitherto depended chiefly on lawyers and accountants, rather than on economists, to formulate rules for transfer prices that will be accepted, in the years ahead, however, this tendency may be reversed, as the economic aspects of transfer pricing become better understood. The United States Congressional Joint Economic Committee sponsored a study of subsidies that appeared in some dozen volumes of staff studies, hearings, and compendium papers in 1972-1973. The economic theory of intergovernmental relations is still in a confused enough state to invite more articles in all sorts of journals, even the most abstract, where real of apparent conflicts between distributive goals and Pareto-efficient equilibria are a common theme.
