Political feasibility of emission trading systems may crucially depend on the free initial allocation of emission allowances to energy-intensive industries in order to ameliorate adverse production and employment effects. We investigate the potential trade-off between such compensation and...

In 2005, an EU-wide emissions trading scheme covering major CO2 producing sites shall come into power. The key objective of the trading scheme is to promote cost-efficiency of carbon reduction within the EU. We identify policy-relevant tradeoffs between overall efficiency, compensation and...

Starting in 2005, the EU will implement a CO2 emissions trading scheme. In this paper we show that the outspoken goals of economic efficiency and free allocation of allowances are incompatible with harmonized allocation rules. In general, the assignment of allowances is endogenous and differs...

Germany taxes electricity use since 1999. The government granted reduced rates to energy intensive firms in the industrial sector for addressing potentially adverse effects on firms' competitiveness. Firms that use more electricity than certain thresholds established by legislation, pay reduced...

We study the effect of direct democracy on local taxation. Our setting is the German federal state of Bavaria, where in 1995 a state-wide referendum introduced the possibility to initiate direct democratic legislation into the local government code. Relying on a sample of all Bavarian...

This paper deals with the problems encountered in defining and measuring the degree of fiscal decentralization. Drawing on a recent analytical framework of the OECD, different measures of fiscal autonomy and revenue decentralization are presented which consider tax-raising powers of sub-central...

Recent literature has emphasized that redistributive grant systems may tend to internalize fiscal externalities arising from tax competition. This paper further explores the conditions under which local grant systems enforced by the state government will enhance efficiency. A system of...

While there is a large and growing number of studies on the determinants of corporate tax rates, the literature has so far ignored the fact that the behavior of governments in setting tax rates is often best described as a discrete choice decision problem. We set up an empirical model that...

This paper is concerned with fiscal externalities arising from local taxation of a mobile factor. Using a panel of more 1100 local jurisdictions it provides empirical evidence on how the local tax rate as well as the tax rate in the neighborhood affect the local tax base. The results support the...

This paper examines the factors determining vertical government structures. An empirical analysis for a panel of OECD countries indicates that apart from preferences, economies of scale, and other factors, institutions explain cross-national differences in the degree of fiscal decentralization....