Finland is committed to high quality and extensive public services and a high level of income redistribution. The heavy tax burden these commitments require is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain due to tax competition and the need to harmonise certain taxes with other EU countries. These...

This paper reviews fiscal relations within the European Union in the context of the theory of fiscal federalism and of the principle of subsidiarity. It analyses the fiscal policy implications of the introduction of the single currency, tax harmonisation and competition issues and spending at...

One commonly held view about the difference between continental European countries and other OECD countries, especially the United States, is that the heavy regulation of Europe reduces its growth. Using newly assembled data on regulation in several sectors of many OECD countries, we provide...

This paper describes the OECD’s new small global forecasting model for the three main OECD economic regions: the United States, the euro area, and Japan. The key variables – which include output, inflation, the trade balance, and import prices – are driven by monetary and fiscal policy,...

Central banks have responded with exceptional vigour to the crisis by using their traditional interest-rate tools to their limits and deploying a wide range of unconventional measures. This paper documents these responses in a systematic way, reviews the evidence about their impact, and...

This paper is concerned with how stylised differences in monetary policy transmission mechanisms and product and labour market rigidities between the US and euro-area economies affect their resilience to temporary shocks. To address this issue, a small general equilibrium model with long-run...

This paper tests for horizontal tax competition in the VAT for a sample of Brazilian states in the period 1985-2001. The states have considerable autonomy to set their VAT rates and bases, often using this tax as an industrial policy tool. The empirical findings, based on the estimation of a tax...

This paper examines the future of capital income taxation in a world of capital mobility. It first explores the motivation for personal and corporate income taxation in an open economy and argues that policymakers should view these taxes as having quite different impacts on the economy. The...

The landscapes of housing loan markets vary considerably across OECD countries, reflecting differences in preferences and policy settings. This paper first draws a topography of disparities in mortgage structure, documenting considerable variation across OECD countries in key features such as in...