Corporate tax reforms carried out in EU countries since 1980 entail lower statutory tax rates and reductions in generous tax depreciation provisions. Several countries including the UK have reduced tax rates for SMEs. This study compares incentive effects of such reforms on the SMEs’...

Existing growth research provides little explanation for the very large differences in long-run growth performance across OECD countries. We show that cognitive skills can account for growth differences within the OECD, whereas a range of economic institutions and quantitative measures of...

This paper highlights the potential for joint OECD (or non-OPEC) carbon taxes to reduce OPEC’s monopoly rent and provide benefit to non-OPEC countries provided jointly agreed trigger strategies are adhered to. In traditional economic theory, the primary purpose of a carbon tax is to...

We investigate the existence of Granger-causality between current account and government budget balances over the period 1970-2007, for different EU and OECD country groupings. We use the panel-data approach of Kónya (2006), which is based on SUR systems and Wald tests with country specific...

Recent micro studies have documented extensive downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) for job stayers in many OECD countries, but the effect on aggregate variables remains disputed. Using data for hourly nominal wages, we explore the existence of DNWR on wages at the industry level in 19 OECD...

This paper explores the existence of downward real wage rigidity (DRWR) in 19 OECD countries, over the period 1973–1999, using data for hourly nominal earnings at industry level. Based on a nonparametric statistical method, which allows for country and year specific variation in both the...