We seek to understand how Laffer curves differ across countries in the U.S. and the EU-14, thereby providing insights into fiscal limits for government spending and the service of sovereign debt. As an application, we analyze the consequences for the permanent sustainability of current debt...

This paper examines the impact of trade liberalizations on government revenues. Using a new dataset on tax revenues for 130 countries between 1792 and 2006 we find that on average countries were able to recover the tax revenues lost by liberalizing trade by using other sources of revenue. There...