Over the previous two decades, many OECD countries have lowered the degree of progressivity in their tax structures. In this paper, I investigate labour tax progression in a world characterised by a segmented labour market where the higher-paying jobs are rationed due to (i) oligopolistic market...

This paper studies the determinants of immigration policy in an economy with entrepreneurs and workers where a trade union has monopoly power over wages. The presence of the union leads a benevolent government to implement a high level of immigration and induces a welfare loss not only from an...

Since objective news coverage is vital to democracy, captured media can seriously distort collective decisions. The current paper develops a voting model where citizens are uncertain about the welfare effects induced by alternative policy options and derive information about those effects from...

The multinationalization of corporate investment in recent years has given rise to a number of international tax avoidance schemes that may be eroding tax revenues in industrialized countries, but which may also reduce tax burdens on mobile capital and so facilitate investment. Both the welfare...

This paper investigates the choice of apportionment factors under a corporate tax system of Formula Apportionment. In contrast to perceived wisdom, we show that the apportionment formula contains both mobile (capital) and immobile (labor) factors if jurisdictions are granted full fiscal autonomy...

We use a simple framework where firms in two countries serve their respective domestic markets and a world market to analyze under which conditions cost-reducing mergers will be beneficial for the merging firms, the home country, and the world as a whole. For a national merger, the policies...

The trends and consequences of terrorist activities are often captured by counting the number of incidents and casualties. More recently, the effects of terrorist acts on various aspects of the economy have been analyzed. These costs are surveyed and put in perspective. As economic consequences...

In currency exchange markets, there is a conflict between individual decisions and the socially optimal solution. Whereas agents have a coordination motive to take the same position, at the social level effective market coordination per se is not socially valuable, and the central bank aims at...

This paper analyses the effects of a pension system privatization in a unionized economy. Using an overlapping-generations framework we show that in an environment characterized by unemployment, a reform towards a private pension system in the steady state may result in lower levels of...

Presumptive taxation, in which an income proxy is used as tax base, has been and is still used today in countries with very diverse situations - developing, transition and developed countries. Usually, this form of taxation is thought of as a revenue-raising device in presence of widespread...