The confidence that financial markets are able to discipline the debt behaviour of governments is not very high. Therefore, the Stability and Growth Pact has been implemented as an institutional constraint to substitute for the market mechanism. With the weakening of the Pact, market discipline...

The discussion about country-specific influence on the interest rate decisions of the European Central Bank does not cease. To investigate the possibility of regional influence on the determination of the policy rate, we estimate Taylor-type reaction functions for the period from 1999 to 2005...

Setting minimum tax rates is a well discussed way of mitigating pressure from tax competition. This paper investigates which motives shape the support for a minimum corporate tax among politicians. We make use of a unique data base: a survey among members of the European parliament. Our results...

This paper studies the effects of political factors, mainly partisanship, on corporate taxes in the past 30 years – a period of intensifying competitive pressure in Europe. Extending the Zodrow-Mieszkowski model by decision-makers who have ideological preferences yields the hypothesis that...

This paper constitutes a first analysis on stock returns and stock return volatility of energy corporations from the Eurozone. According to our results, the gas market does not play a role for the pricing of Eurozone energy stocks. However, changes in the Euro to U.S. Dollar exchange rate as...

This paper empirically analyses whether both personal and corporate taxation have an impact on companies' capital structure decisions. We investigate the effect of the difference in taxation of debt and equity financing on capital structures. Our empirical results, based on a comprehensive panel...