Using a panel of 97 mostly developing and transitional countries for the period 1990-2011, this paper explores fiscal implications of membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Em-ploying robust difference-in-difference specifications as well as semi-parametric methods, we find that...

Aggressive tax planning efforts of highly profitable multinational companies (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS)) have become the subject of intense public debate in recent years. As a response, several international initiatives and parties have called for more transparency in financial...

In this paper, we use the estimated three-region DSGE model GEAR, which pictures Germany, the Euro Area and the Rest of the world and which is used by the Deutsche Bundesbank for policy analysis, to analyze how discretionary fiscal policy in Germany and the rest of EMU affected GDP growth and...

One of the most striking tax developments in recent years, and one that continues to attract considerable attention, is the adoption by several countries of a form of 'flat tax'. Discussion of these quite radical reforms has been marked, however, more by assertion and rhetoric than by analysis...

Tax administration plays a crucial role in determining a country`s real (or effective) tax system. Unfortunately, tax administrations in many countries do not function optimally and distort the intention of tax laws. In order for taxation to have its intended effect on the allocation of...

Tax reform is deeply political. There is now a significant body of political and economic research by political scientists and sociologists, concerning fiscal politics or sociology, in particular addressing taxation in democracies. At the same time, we take for granted, nowadays, that the...

With the growth of multinational corporations and its effect on corporate tax revenues, it is not surprising that international tax reform is a major part of President Obama’s Framework for Business Tax Reform as he begins his second term. Noticeably missing from this and other discussions of...

Over 140 countries agreed on a fundamental global corporate tax reform in 2021. The new framework includes a consumer-location-based profit taxation (Pillar 1) and a global minimum tax rate of 15% (Pillar 2). Using high-frequency asset price movements around the main events of the reform's...

After the Global Financial Crisis a controversial rush to fiscal austerity followed in many countries. Yet research on the effects of austerity on macroeconomic aggregates was and still is unsettled, mired by the difficulty of identifying multipliers from observational data. This paper...

Global climate change, largely the result of carbon emissions brought about by a global economy addicted to fossil fuel and committed to economic expansion, threatens the very viability of the economy that causes it. The relatively cheap price of fossil fuels does not account for the costs to...