We investigate the trade-off between employment and labour productivity in a panel of OECD countries in 1970-2003. The endogeneity of employment is shown to matter crucially for assessing its effect on productivity. Estimating a structural model with 3SLS, where employment depends on...

This paper explores the economic consequences of proposed EU reforms for a common consolidated corporate tax base. The reforms replace separate accounting with formula apportionment as a way to allocate corporate tax bases across countries. To assess the economic implications, we use a...

This article assesses the economic implications of the introduction of consolidation with formula apportionment in the European Union under alternative enhanced cooperation agreements. We find that the consolidation is likely to yield a small aggregate welfare gain in Europe, but that not all...

The Code of Conduct for business taxation may, diametrically opposed to its intention, aggravate tax competition between EU Member States. The reason is that it induces, by restricting harmful tax practices, cuts in generic tax rates that may reduce tax revenue even further. If one presupposes...

European cohesion policy entails predominantly the funding of infrastructure and employment projects in lagging regions of EU Member States. It involves the distribution of more than 35 billion euro annually, making it the second most important EU policy in budgetary terms. Its main aim is to...

In this paper we measure the strength of agglomeration economies on the basis of Dutch regional data. The drift to the city has been going on for hundreds of years. As a result, most economic activity is concentrated in small geographical areas. The advantages of proximity of people and firms...

In Europe, neither unemployment rates nor institutions are uniform. In the EMU, countries have coordinated their monetary policy, and fiscal policy might follow. Does convergence in fiscal policy imply that unemployment rates will converge, too, or is diversified fiscal policy desirable? An...

Over the period 2005-2009 the Dutch government increased childcare subsidies substantially, reducing the average effective parental fee by 50%, and extended subsidies to so-called guestparent care. We estimate the labour supply effect of this reform with a difference-in-differences strategy,...

We study the extension of an EITC for single mothers in the Netherlands to mothers with a youngest child of 12 to 15 years old. This reform has increased the net income for the treatment group by 5%. Using both DD and RD, we show that this reform has had a negligible effect on labour...

We estimate long-run and short-run elasticities of Value Added Tax and Personal Income Tax revenues with respect to their bases for the Netherlands. We find VAT elasticities around one in the long-run and short-run. The long-run PIT elasticity is significantly below one, while the short-run...