We study the effect of inflowing remittances - a major source of capital for many countries - on tax-revenues and tax-policy. Instrumenting remittances with changes in the oil-price interacted with a country's distance to oil-producing countries, we find that remittances have a large positive...

Despite the advent of trade liberalisation, trade taxes still remain a huge source of tax revenues in Sub-Saharan Africa. Further trade reforms in the form of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) could, however, hinder output growth in the region if these reforms lead to a decline in total...

We estimate the elasticities of the most important tax categories using a new quarterly database of discretionary tax measures for the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom over the period 1980Q1 to 2018Q2. Employing Romer and Romer's (2009) narrative approach, we construct a...

This paper develops new measures of environmental costs and local revenue capacity as the basis for a new municipal aid formula in Massachusetts. On the cost side, unlike previous studies, we quantify the effects on local non-school spending of characteristics related to uncontrollable costs. On...

In recent years, government revenues in many EU countries experienced significant and erratic changes, which, a priori, could not be fully explained by macroeconomic developments or by discretionary fiscal policy measures. We investigate this issue by estimating "unexplained" changes in tax and...

This paper examines the role of public education in the context of parental migration, and it studies the effects of an expansive income tax policy that is adopted to increase public education expenditure per pupil. It is shown that such a policy may exacerbate income inequality in the long run...

Against the background of a notoriously high macroeconomic instability and the need to raise tax revenues to meet the demands of public spending, this paper analyzes the tradeoff between growth and volatility of tax revenues in Latin America. We use a two-step Engle-Granger-type model to...

Using a cost-capacity gap framework, this paper is the first study to quantify nonschool fiscal disparities across Connecticut municipalities. In the absence of a Uniform Chart of Accounts for municipalities, the paper uses a newly assembled dataset of multi-year local financial records,...

Nach der aktuellen Prognose des Arbeitskreises „Steuerschätzungen“ wird das Steueraufkommen von 600 Mrd. Euro 2012 bis zum Jahr 2017 auf knapp 705 Mrd. Euro steigen. Verfügt der Staat damit über ausreichend hohe Finanzmittel, so dass sich sogar Spielräume für Steuersenkungen bieten? Die...

Recent years have seen a growing interest among donors on taxation in developing countries. This reflects a concern for domestic revenue mobilization to finance public goods and services, as well as recognition of the centrality of taxation for growth and redistribution. The global financial...