Personal income tax (hereinafter referred to as PIT) has a short history, as it appeared in tax systems of EU countries as late as at the end of the 18th century. As a specific universal structure it performs two economic functions: providing financial means for covering some public expenses...

Sub-national governments often finance substantial parts of their budgets via taxes on capital or other mobile factors - despite having access to alternative, less distortionary, revenue sources. This paper develops three hypotheses to explain this pattern and tests them in a natural experiment...

OVERALL ASSESSMENT This Report on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC)—Data Module provides an update of the assessment conducted in February 2006, which was based on the July 2003 version of the IMF’s Data Quality Assessment Framework (DQAF). This ROSC Data Module is the first...

This paper focuses on the technical assistance report on international taxation challenges and options in Guatemala. The topic of treaties has garnered special attention in Guatemala as of late, requiring a strategy to be devised. Treaties foster a better business climate and can encourage...

This paper investigates the in inflationary effects of fscal policy in an optimizing general equilibrium monetary model with capital accumulation, exible prices and wealth effects. The model is calibrated to Euro Area quarterly data. Simulation results show that government defcits, high debt...

Within a two-step GARCH framework we explore the linkages between equity returns of ten sectors in the euro area, the United States and Japan, respectively. Our estimation framework allows a distinction to be made between spillover effects originating from one of the three currency areas and...

This paper investigates the performance of optimised interest rate rules when there is uncertainty about a key determinant of the monetary transmission mechanism, namely the degree of persistence characterising the inflation process. The paper focuses on the euro area and utilises two variants of...

There has been much discussion of the differences in macroeconomic performance and prospects between the US, Japan and the euro area. Using Markov-switching techniques, in this paper we identify and compare specifically their major business-cycle features and examine the case for a common...

The first official data releases of quarterly real GDP for the euro area are published about eight weeks after the end of the reference quarters. Meanwhile, ongoing economic developments must be assessed from various, more readily available, monthly indicators. We examine in the context of...