The growing literature on the potential role of energy resources around the Caspian Sea is dominated by geoplitics whereas economic aspects have been largely neglected thus far. The relevance of Caspian oil and gas reserves continues to be praised, though objective data on production and exports...

Taxing local business is a common feature of local public finance in many countries. The German local business tax (Gewerbesteuer) is the main tax revenue source of municipalities in Germany. Liberal professionals, however, have traditionally been exempted from it. In the past, the German...

With the 2008 reform of business taxation (Unternehmensteuerreform 2008) a preferential treatment of retained earnings for non-incorporated companies was introduced: Earnings may be retained at a preferential tax rate (29.8%) and will be subjected to supplementary tax (26.4%) when they will be...

In general, demographic development is expected to increase the number of cases needing nursing care. In order to explore the possible dynamics in this area, this papers employs a demographic model of the DIW which integrates among others a steadily increasing life expectancy. Grouping by sex,...

This article analyses the reform process in the European and the German natural gas sector. Competition in the industry and intra-European trade have been underdeveloped thus far. We argue that the European gas pipelines are a monopolistic bottleneck that require some form of access regulation,...

German corporated companies are taxed with a federal corporation tax and with a local busi-ness tax. The latter has a similar, but broader tax base (including e.g. 25% of interest pay-ments) and its tax rate is set independently by every municipality including the so called city-states...

In the German system of fiscal equalization Länder (States) with tax revenue below the average get payments from the Länder above the average. The difference between the average and the own tax revenue per capita will be compensated up to 75%. To prevent Länder from getting payments form...