In recent years Chinese acquisitions abroad have increased significantly. This paper uses a large dataset on cross-border M&A deals to investigate whether Chinese foreign acquisitions differ from acquisitions coming from other countries. We find that Chinese acquirers buy targets with lower...

On 3 June 2020, the German government announced a temporary value added tax (VAT) rate reduction. VAT rates were reduced on 1 July 2020 and went back to their previous level on 1 January 2021. We study the price effects of the temporary VAT rate reduction using a web-scraped data set covering...

We analyze how the combined effect of automatic stabilizers and discretionary changes in tax-benefit systems have affected the cushioning of income shocks in the Euro zone and the EU-27 in the period 2007-2014. We propose a new summary measure of the combined effect of automatic stabilizers and...

We analyze how the combined effect of automatic stabilizers and discretionary changes in tax-benefit systems have affected the cushioning of income shocks in the Euro zone and the EU-27 in the period 2007-2014. We propose a new summary measure of the combined effect of automatic stabilizers and...

We analyze how the combined effect of automatic stabilizers and discretionary changes in taxbenefit systems have affected the cushioning of income shocks in the Euro zone and the EU-27 in the period 2007-2014. We propose a new summary measure of the combined effect of automatic stabilizers and...

The 'starving the beast' hypothesis claims that tax cuts lead to lower public spending, rather than higher debt levels and higher taxes in the future. This paper uses the institutional setting of German fiscal federalism to its advantage in order to explore how fiscal policy reacts to exogenous...

A mechanism to restructure the debt of an insolvent euro country is a missing element in the emerging institutional architecture of the euro area. The introduction of an insolvency procedure for sovereigns faces a dilemma: In the foreseeable future, its introduction would risk pushing Europe...