This paper considers the implications of complementarity in private production and constraints on government for optimal fiscal policy. Using an endogenous growth model with public finance, it derives three central results which modify findings in the literature under standard assumptions....

This paper reviews the existing evidence on the effects of tax reforms on output levels and growth over the short and long run from different strands of the literature. It develops and applies criteria to evaluate the usefulness of ex-post estimates to predict the effects of tax reforms ex-ante....

We investigate the empirical relationship between decentralisation and corruption. Using a newly assembled dataset containing data for up to 174 countries, we revisit the empirical evidence and seek to explain some of the inconsistent results that exist in the literature. We find that not only...

Intervention to support export initiatives is commonplace in both industrialised and developing countries. Historically this has been underpinned by a belief that exporting is good for growth. But the evidence base underpinning this belief has been macroeconomic, yet intervention has generally...

Using data on UK manufacturing firms, we examine the effects of exchange rate uncertainty on firm decisions on export market entry and export intensity. The use of micro data and new measures of exchange rate uncertainty enable us to test for hysteresis effects in a new way and to test the...

Effective marginal tax rates can be very different from the statutory rate and vary across firms, reflecting such factors as the extent and nature of taxable deductions (losses, depreciation), asset and ownership structures, and debt/equity financing. We estimate firm-specific EMTRs and related...

The introduction of containerization triggered complementary technological and organizational changes that revolutionized global freight transport. Despite numerous claims about the importance of containerization in stimulating international trade, econometric estimates on the effects of...

type="main" xml:id="ecin12092-abs-0001" This paper exploits the unique institutional features of South Africa to estimate the impact of provincial public spending on firm productivity. In contrast to existing microeconomic evidence, we explore the effects of fiscal expenditures and remove the...

This paper evaluates the trade-off between growth and welfare maximization from two perspectives. Firstly, it synthesizes and extends endogenous growth models with public finance to compare growth and welfare maximizing tax rates. Secondly, it examines the distinct model outcomes in terms of...