Global impact assessment of unilateral climate policies is commonly based on multi‐sector, multi‐region computable general equilibrium (CGE) models that are calibrated to consistent accounts of production, consumption, and bilateral trade flows. However, global economic databases such as...

The growing momentum for gas price liberalization in Russia is increasingly constrained by fears of potentially strong adverse impact that market-based price setting principle will have on the economy. Based on a novel multi-regional, multi-sector and multi-household computable general...

In the tax policy debate, differentiation of value-added taxes is often justified by distributional concerns. Our quantitative analysis for Germany indicates that such concerns are misplaced. We find that the abolition of VAT differentiation has only negligible redistributive effects. Instead,...

This paper assesses the economic impacts of linking the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) to emerging schemes beyond Europe, in the presence of a post-Kyoto agreement in 2020. Simulations with a numerical multi-country model of the world carbon market show that linking the European ETS induces...

Energy markets and energy-intensive industries in all EU member states - especially in Germany - are subject to a diverse set of policies related to climate change. We analyse the potential efficiency losses from simultaneous application of emission taxes and emissions trading in qualitative and...

We analyze the welfare implications of property taxation. Using a sufficient statistics approach, we show that the tax incidence depends on how housing prices, labor and other types of incomes as well as public services respond to property tax changes. Empirically, we exploit the German...

Who benefits from the evasion of value added taxes (VAT)? Using a reform that enforced VAT on previously non-compliant large retailers in Armenia, we estimate a onethird passthrough of the tax burden on prices. This suggests that pre-enforcement evasion rents were broadly shared with consumers...

Implementation of an EU-wide emissions trading system by means of National Allocation Plans is at the core of European environmental policy agenda. Member States are faced with the problem of allocating their national emission budgets under the EU Burden Sharing Agreement between...

We trace back Romania's development to a low-tax country among the Member States of the European Union by analyzing the major tax law changes in corporate taxation since 1992. We find that the significant reduction of the corporate income tax rate from 45% in 1992 to 16% since 2005 has not been...

Based on a detailed model of the German tax-benefit system, this paper simulates private and fiscal returns to education for college graduates and college dropouts. Completing a five-year college degree is found to be associated with an internal rate of return (IRR) of 14.2% for gross earnings,...