This paper analyzes the geographical patterns of city growth in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation in relation to the Stalinist policies of the 1930s to 1950s, and WWII. Using a unique data set on the locations of Gulag camps, and on the evacuation of industrial enterprises during WWII,...

Qianhai – an innovation park in Shenzhen – has the possibility of boosting innovation in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and in the wider region. This paper analyses the costs and benefits of existing plans for Qianhai and discusses the profit-maximising design of the Qianhai. We review existing...

Internal debt financing can be used by multinational firms to shift profits from high-tax to low-tax countries. Governments apply thin capitalization rules (TCRs), which limit the deductibility of interest expenses, to restrict this behavior. TCRs fall in two main categories: safe haven rules...

This paper evaluates the relative importance of labor productivity vs. income taxes and social security contributions for tax compliance in an economy with a large degree of informality. To this end, we build a bargaining model in which matched employer-employee pairs of heterogeneous productive...