Tax competition poses two problems for international cooperation: defection and distributive conflict. Multilateral cooperation to stop tax competition may fail because states face incentives to renege on their promises or because they face adverse distributional consequences, either of which...

AbstractTax competition poses two problems for international cooperation: defection and distributive conflict. Multilateral cooperation to stop tax competition may fail because states face incentives to renege on their promises or because they face adverse distributional consequences, either of...

In this paper we examine the impact of international trade on the absolute and relative wages of educated and less-educated workers in Canada over 1993-96. We show that after correcting for the relative supply effect of educated to less educated workers the wage differential would have been on...

This paper considers the generalized second-best analytics of optimal restructuring under a political constraint, building on the modelling approach in Dehejia (1997). It is shown that the second-best optimum entails administering the terms-of-trade shock fully at the initiation of the reform,...

We argue that the traditional question 'fixed vs. flexible exchange rates?' is not well-defined, because 'flexible exchange rates' does not explicitly specify any particular monetary policy. In traditional analyses, 'flexible exchange rates' was interpreted as implying a fixed money supply. But...

This paper contributes to ongoing debates on international income comparisons by deploying a novel methodology for constructing empirical distribution functions for the United States and Canada over the period 1993 - 2000. We also conduct tests for first, second, third order stochastic dominance...

In this note, we consider a perennial problem in single-person choice theory, that is, characterizing choice under uncertainty. In particular, we consider a hypothesis put forward by Joseph Stiglitz (2005), suggesting that median-maximing behavior may be optimal under certain circumstances, and...

This paper examines transition dynamics in a search economy. We contrast two extreme cases: a completely unexpected reform and a fully anticipated reform. We view the former as a metaphor for a reform being announced and implemented with immediate effect, the latter as a metaphor for a reform...

When shock therapy is politically infeasible, will gradualism work? Mussa (1986) conjectured, in the context of a neoclassical model of adjustment, that the answer was ‘yes’. This paper takes up the Mussa conjecture by: (i) building a political-economy model in which it makes sense; (ii)...