Tax Fairness and Folk Justice

Steven M. Sheffrin is a Professor of Economics and the Executive Director of the Murphy Institute at Tulane University. He is the author and co-author of several books, including Property Taxes and Tax Revolts (with Arthur O'Sullivan and Terri A. Sexton, Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Rational Expectations, 2nd edition (Cambridge University Press, 1996). His articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the National Tax Journal, the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Monetary Economics, and the International Economic Review. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• Preface; 1. Approaching tax fairness; 2. The foundations of folk justice; 3. Fairness and the property tax; 4. Should we redistribute income through taxation?; 5. Why do people pay taxes?; 6. Desert, equity theory, and taxation; 7. Concluding perspectives.

'A fabulous book! Filled with insights on a crucially important, but underexplored, aspect of tax policy. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the politics or sociology of taxation.' David Gamage, University of California, Berkeley