This paper estimates Nash-type fiscal reaction functions for European governments competing for revenue from diesel excises. It appears that European governments strategically set their excise levels by responding to their neighbors’ tax rates. This provides evidence for the presence of tax...

This paper analyzes enhanced cooperation agreements in corporate taxation in a three country tax competition model where countries differ in size. We characterize equilibrium tax rates and the optimal tax responses due to the formation of an enhanced cooperation agreement. Conditions for...

This paper analytically derives the conditions under which the slope of the tax reaction function is negative in a classical tax competition model. If countries maximize welfare, we show that a negative slope (reflecting strategic substitutability) occurs under relatively mild conditions....

The consequences of granting democratic rights to citizens in otherwise authoritarian regimes has been extensively studied. Much less is know about the implications of retracting these rights when a government wants to recentralize power. Autonomous governance in rural China, introduced in the...

Which ways and means are available for the macroeconomic and fiscal coordination and/or integration within the EMU-framework? Which are the pros and cons of these scenarios? This paper combines economic theory, empirical analysis and insights regarding EMU's institutional history in order to...

Institutional barriers to entry were removed to a considerable extent in 1996 in the Dutch retail sector. Three years before that the regulator decided to not take legal actions anymore against entrants violating institutional requirements. In the current analysis we investigate the effects of...

'Robot cars' are cars that allow for automated driving. They can drive closer together than human driven 'normal cars', and thereby raise road capacity. Obtaining a robot car instead of a normal car can also be expected to lower the user's value of time losses (VOT), because travel time can be...

The paper presents a polycentric general equilibrium model with congestion externalities and distortionary labor taxation calibrated to fit the key empirical regularities of the regional economy and transport system of Randstad conglomeration. In line with more stylized models, marginal external...

There has been wide interest in private supply of roads as a solution to traffic congestion. We study its efficiency under demand uncertainty: we solve for equilibrium and optimum as benchmarks, and evaluate the efficiency of possible regulatory policies for private road operators. We obtain...

Existing work emphasizes the importance of traffic congestion externalities, but typically ignores cruising-for-parking externalities. We introduce a novel methodology to estimate the marginal external cruising costs of parking. The level of cruising is identified by examining to what extent the...