We show that, in many countries, tax compliance is volatile and markedly responds to fiscal policy. To explore the consequence of this novel stylized fact, we build a model of sovereign debt with limited commitment and imperfect tax enforcement. Fiscal policy persistently affects the size of the...

This paper investigates the impact of elections on the level and composition of fiscal instruments using a sample of 19 high-income OECD countries that can be characterized as developed, established democracies during the period 1972-1999. We find that elections shift public spending towards...

We construct a dynamic model of a small open economy to analyze the effects of large energy subsidies. The model includes domestic energy production and consumption, trade in energy at world market prices, as well as private and public sector production. The model is calibrated to Egypt and used...

This paper examines the flexibility of multinational firms to use income-shifting strategies within a tax year to react to operating losses. First, we develop an analytical model that considers how affiliate losses can be adjusted by using the transfer prices of tangible and intangible assets,...

Tax competition is supposed to lead to inefficiencies in the provision of public goods and difficulties for decentralized redistribution. A necessary condition for these ef fects to occur is that residence and location decisions are determined by fiscal considerations. In this paper, the impact...

We study the occurrence of holdout litigation in the context of sovereign defaults. The number of creditor lawsuits against foreign governments has strongly increased over the past decades, but there is a large variation across crisis events. Why are some defaults followed by a "run to the...

We offer a new methodology for the assessment of public debt sustainability in a stochastic economy when sovereign default taken into account. The default threshold differs from the no-Ponzi condition and depends on the post-default debt recovery rule. We distinguish sustainability and...

centuries, defaulting governments were immune from legal action by foreign creditors. This paper shows that this is no longer the case. Building a dataset covering four decades, we find that creditor lawsuits have become an increasingly common feature of sovereign debt markets. The legal...

According to a standard argument, higher income inequality fosters redistributive activities of the government in favor of the median income earner. This paper shows that if redistribution is achieved by a public provision of goods and services rather than by transfers, higher income inequality...

The paper compares two state-of-art but very dinstinct methods used in macroeconomics: rational-expectations DSGE and bounded rationality behavioural models. Both models are extended to include a financial friction on the supply side.The result in both models is that production, supply of credit...