Corporate tax systems generally maintain a sharp distinction between debt and equity, however, the advent of hybrid instruments has transformed the universe offinancial instruments into a debt-equity continuum and tax systems therefore need to draw lines that distinguish the set of debt...

The rules demarcating debt and equity for tax purposes differ across countries, hence the possibility that a hybrid instrument is treated as equity in one country and debt in another and that a ?rm with foreign investment can combine tax favored dividend income in the home country and tax...

This paper investigates the merits of different democratic institutions when politics is uni-dimensional, there is uncertainty both about the preferences of the future electorate and the future polarization of political parties, and politicians have better information about the state of the...

This paper presents empirical evidence of a positive effect of council size on government spending using a data set of 2,056 municipalities in the German state of Bavaria over a period of 21 years. We apply a regression discontinuity design to avoid an endogeneity bias. In particular, we exploit...

The European Commission recently proposed to move towards a consolidated tax base for European multinational companies, to be allocated across EU member states through a system of formula apportionment. This paper argues that while the Commission’s four alternative blueprints for company tax...