The appointment of a “technical government” in Italy in 2011 raised many criticism, mostly related to its lack of democratic legitimacy. The peculiar nature of this government has been justified with the risk of default of Italy which the “normal” political processes were assumed unable...

The paper extends the works by Judd [K.L. Judd, Redistributive Taxation in a Simple Perfect Foresight Model, J. Public Econ. 28 (1985), 59-83.] and Chamley [C. Chamley, Optimal taxation of capital income in general equilibrium with infinite lives, Econometrica, 54 (1986), 607-622.], who...

While the theoretical structure of the product life cycle approach is the same as in the traditional doctrine of international trade, based on the hypothesis of full employment of factors, its empirical application is useful in explaining the composition of exports from the countries of Central...

The fiscal contraction undertaken in Ireland in the late 80’s has received attention in the literature since it was followed by an expansion of aggregate demand and production. This has been considered an effect of the expectations of a lower future tax burden, which boosted private...

In a closed economy, a commodity tax drives a wedge between the producer price and the consumer price. In open economies, intercountry differences in commodity taxation can induce two additional distortions: (1) Cross-country differences in consumer marginal rates of substitution (which result...

The author analyzes (both theoretically and empirically) the international distortions and fiscal interdependence that arise because of different tax rates among a region's countries. The author also studies what happens when the countries try to harmonize taxes, focusing on how the...