I mentioned this article from VoxEU by Alessina et al a while ago (1st bullet point). Meanwhile Gilles Saint-Paul came forth with a tough critique and Alessina, Ichino and Karabarbounis have replied today.
All very interesting (& most likely this is just the warming up stage…), but I really think all these researchers are (most likely willingly…) missing the more general point raised by Greg Mankiw (this is a great paper, by the way!).
PS. Everything in these entries is self-explanatory, so you won’t get additional comments from me this time– unless you really insist, that is…
This what the paper is about (I trust you refer to Mankiw and Weinzierl’s here), after all: challenging the whole basis of taxation as currently practiced. As we all know, that is largely based on considerations other than Economics :-). I have not gone into details in their modelling for obvious reasons of time constraints, but I strongly doubt that "torn apart" is more than just a personal
It seems more of a philosophical question rather than actual Economics. A lot of their conclusions are just driven by the assumptions of the model. Their paper was torn apart in the Fall when it was presented here.