Recent scholarship of interest

Here are some recent papers of interest:

On the power and role of the state:

• Bernard Schneider, The End of Taxation without End: A New Tax Regime for U.S. Expatriates, arguing that the US should settle for residence based taxation like everyone else in the world. Has a nice section on the history of the practice.
• Claudia Williamson, Contracting Institutions, asking what constrains the state from plundering its people, if the state has monopoly power, and concluding that cultural norms do.
• Martha Fineman, Beyond Identities: The Limits of an Antidiscrimination Approach to Equality, comparing legal cultures of equality and concluding that in the US, human need is seen as a matter of individual responsibility alone while other constitutional democracies also see it as a state responsibility. 

On the inequitable impact of tax treaties:

• Fabian Barthel & Eric Neumayer, Competing for Scarce Foreign Capital: Spatial Dependence in the Diffusion of Double Taxation Treaties, when bilateral FDI positions are asymmetric (as between rich and poor countries), capital importers (poorer countries, usually) lose by entering into a tax treaty; they sign anyway because of competition. Studies DTTs between 1969–2005.

On subsidies & industrial policy:

• Stephanie Rickard, A Non-Tariff Protectionist Bias in Majoritarian Politics: Government Subsidies and Electoral Institutions. Examines how different governments use trade protection via tariffs and subsidies, and finds that majoritarian systems are biased toward both.

And on methodology in legal scholarship:

• Tom Ginsburg, Pitfalls of Measuring the Rule of Law, pointing out methodological challenges for rule-of-law scholarship, calling for caution in policymaking (same argument as I made about using "case studies" to advance international tax principles, you can find that here)