Social values shape policy outcomes. We examine the role of postmaterialism, a widely used concept in the social sciences, for the mix of capital and labour taxation chosen by a society. Following political scientist Inglehart, we define the degree of postmaterialism as the relative importance...

Rather than about absolute payoffs, governments in fiscal competition often seem to care about their performance relative to other governments. Moreover, they often appear to mimic policies observed elsewhere. We study such behaviour in a tax competition game with mobile capital à la...

We analyse tax competition with corporate income taxes in a common market where tax revenues are allocated according to an apportionment formula. Generally, tax competition is sharper (i.e., equilibrium tax rates are lower) the more tax-elastic is the apportionment formula. This depends on the...

We study the efficiency and distributional consequences of establishing and abolishing the draft in a dynamic model with overlapping generations, taking into account endogenous human capital formation as well as government budget constraints. The introduction of the draft initially benefits the...

The EU Commission is advocating a common consolidated tax base for the corporate income tax, accompanied by a revenue sharing mechanism based on formula apportionment. We analyse tax competition in such a regime, focussing on the interaction between the definition of the tax base and the...

We interpret the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), recently adopted by the EU as a mode of governance in the area of social policy and other fields, as an imitative learning dynamics of the type considered in evolutionary game theory. The best-practise feature and the iterative design of the...

We propose a dynamic general equilibrium model with human capital accumulation to evaluate the economic consequences of compulsory services (such as military draft or social services). Our analysis identifies a so far ignored dynamic cost arising from distortions in time allocation over the...

Religious participation is much more widespread in the United States than in Europe, while Europeans tend to view sects more suspiciously than Americans. We propose an explanation for these patterns without assuming differences in preferences or market fundamentals. Religious markets may have...

One of the main reasons to include pay-as-you-go (PAYG) schemes in multi-pillared pension systems is that they may entail beneficial risk-sharing and diversification features However, depending on the “pension formula” these features vary significantly for different types of PAYG schemes. We...

Contests between groups are plagued by intra-group externalities (freeriding). Yet, costless incentive schemes that entirely avoid free-riding within a group might not be desirable, neither individually nor socially. In contests among two groups, a relatively weak (i.e., small or unproductive)...