This paper investigates whether it is possible to find Pareto-improving commodity tax reforms that harmonize taxes between two countries when governments supply public goods and thus have revenue requirements. To focus on the basic issues, we consider a Ricardian model of trade with elastic...

Over the last decade the locus of policy-making towards asylum seekers and refugees has shifted away from national governments and towards the EU as the Common European Asylum Policy has developed. Most of the focus has been on the harmonisation of policies relating to border control, the...

We study immigration control in a simple one-good model of a homogeneous population in a congested world. We compare quota, the predominant instrument of immigration control, with an entrance price or immigration toll. In our model, an absence of immigration controls (a world of free movement)...

This Paper analyses an overlapping generation model of public good provision under repeated voting. The public good is financed through age-dependent taxation that distorts human capital investment. Taxes redistribute income both across different skill groups and across generations. We contrast...

The tax policy agenda in Australia for more than a decade has been largely driven by a perceived need to reduce the level of income taxation and the progression of marginal rates, financing the revenue shortfall with a broad based consumption tax. A major reform of this kind is now being...

This paper investigates the distributional and efficiency implications of a tax-mix change involving a reduction in personal income taxation financed by a board based consumption tax.

The success or failure of the fight against tax havens is the outcome of a coordination game between a tax haven and its potential investors. Key determinants are the costly international pressure and the haven country's revenue pool. The latter is determined endogenously by the decisions of...

The EU policy against harmful tax competition aims at eliminating tax policies targeted at attracting the internationally mobile tax base. We examine this issue by considering two countries which decide their corporate tax rates their tax regimes (discriminatory or non-discriminatory tax...

The paper reviews and evaluates in a non-technical manner the economic and political arguments for and against the two fiscal convergence criteria written into the Treaty of Maastricht and its Protocols. In order to qualify for full membership in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), net general...

This paper examines the potential consequences of imposing a ‘stability pact’ on the fiscal convergence criteria for monetary union. Various versions of the stability pact are possible. We examine the consequences of reducing the target deficit ratio to 1% and of refundable fines for those...