This paper studies the role of governments and its link to trust. We argue that the public’s trust strongly depends on governments delivering on their core tasks in a market economy. In some economies, a neglect of core tasks can be observed and there seems to be some erosion, notably in terms...

We set up a general model on capital mobility which contains many of the models in the literature as special cases. The race to the bottom results not from a capital flight effect, but rather from a kind of Laffer curve effect in public good provision. Selectively introducing simplifying...

We investigate the effect on municipality spending efficiency of a local property tax reform, which reduced in 2008 the upper limit of the property tax. We compute municipality efficiency scores via data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) from 2005 to 2011, and then we rely in a panel data set to...

This study examines the effects of the tax structure composition for public sector efficiency in a sample of 41 developing countries for the period between 1997-2019. We start by calculating Public Sector Performance (PSP) composite indicators and use them as outputs to compute data envelopment...

According to the Globalization Paradox, globalization limits the freedom of choice for national governments. Capital mobility in particular induces tax competition, thus putting downward pressure on capital taxes. However, while capital mobility introduces the inefficiency of tax competition, it...

We investigate the effect on municipality spending efficiency of a local property tax reform, which reduced in 2008 the upper limit of the property tax. We compute municipality efficiency scores via data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) from 2005 to 2011, and then we rely in a panel data set to...

We consider a model in which business public services must be financed with either a source-based tax on mobile capital, such as a property tax, or a tax on production, such as an origin-based VAT and assess which of the two tax instruments is more efficient. In general, both a capital tax and a...

We characterize the Pareto-frontier in a simple Mirrleesian model of income taxation. We show how the second-best frontier which incorporates incentive constraints due to private information on productive abilities relates to the first-best frontier which takes only resource constraints into...

We provide a comprehensive survey of the recent literature on the link between productive government expenditure and economic growth. Starting with the seminal paper of Robert Barro (1990) we show that an understanding of the core results of the ensuing contributions can be gained from the study...

We study a large economy model in which individuals have private information about their productive abilities and their preferences. Moreover, there is aggregate uncertainty so that the social benefits from taxation and public goods provision are a priori unknown. The analysis is based on a...