The tax-to-GDP ratio rose steadily in most EU countries up to the late 1990s, largely reflecting a sustained expansion of public sector commitments to welfare provision. Since the late 1990s, many EU countries have cut tax rates. However, the tax burden in the EU area remains much higher than in...

This paper considers a number of different measures of core inflation and tries to identify those containing the most useful information about future movements in headline inflation rates over the horizons relevant for monetary policy for the United States, the euro area, Japan, the United...