This paper reviews the economic effects of the EU Savings Taxation Directive. The Directive aims at enabling taxation of foreign interest payments received by individuals in accordance with the rules of their State of residence. The data suggest that the Directive, which is based on automatic...

We interpret social transfers broadly as a set of measures to reduce or relieve poverty, and study how well this purpose is served in the countries that participated in the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions in 2007. Motivated by the findings, we characterise a social...

This paper explores if more generous social spending polices in fact lead to less income inequality, or if redistributive outcomes are offset by behavioral disincentive effects. To account for the inherent endogeneity of social policies with regard to inequality levels, I apply the System GMM...

This paper analyses the trade balance effects of Europe agreements (EA) between the EU-15 and four new EU members from Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC-4) using both static and dynamic panel data approaches. Specifically, the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM, Blundell and Bond, 1998)...

In this paper, we use a computable general equilibrium model (WIATEC) to study the potential impact of implementing Europe's 20-20-20 climate policy. The results show that the economic costs of implementing the policy are only moderate and within the range of recent empirical evidence....

An increasing number of central banks implement monetary policy via two standing facilities: a lending facility and a deposit facility. In this paper we show that it is socially optimal to implement a non-zero interest rate spread. We prove this result in a dynamic general equilibrium model...

Using enterprise data for the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS, this study examines the effects of corruption on productivity. Corruption is defined as a 'bribe tax' and is compared to another form of institutional inefficiency, which is often believed to be closely linked...

In this paper, we study the impact of energy taxes and the EU ETS on a large number of firms in Europe between 1996 and 2007. Using company level micro-data, we examine how firms in different sectors were affected by environmental policies. Aspects of behaviour and performance studied include...

The European Union (EU) has pursued an ambitious agenda for regulating the digital economy, and it is now planning to establish a new package of regulations, including the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Digital Services Act (DSA), and a new regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). These...

The economic and social crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe and around the world is without precedent since World War II if not before. With more than 40 million known cases in Europe in one year, and over 900 000 deaths (March 2020 to March 2021), governments have stepped up their...