This paper updates and extends my earlier work (published in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of Economic Issues on how the middle class fares throughout the world. Wave #6 data from the Luxembourg Income Study, recently released and centered around 2004, provides an opportunity to assess what...

The article outlines recent developments of German tax policy.

Es gibt Anzeichen für einen Steuerwettbewerb zwischen den Nationalstaaten um mobile Produktionsfaktoren: Viele OECD-Länder haben über einen längeren Zeitraum die Steuersätze auf Unternehmens- und Kapitaleinkommen sowie diejenigen auf hohe Arbeitseinkommen gesenkt. Insgesamt lässt sich im...

This paper analyses some fiscal aspects of mortgage debt in the EU. It first describes the main fiscal instruments that governments use to affect mortgage-financed home-ownership. In the empirical part, real mortgage debt growth is analysed for 15 EU countries using pooled regressions. Fiscal...

The empirical literature using vector autoregressive models to assess the effects of fiscal policy shocks strongly disagrees on even the qualitative response of key macroeconomic variables to government spending and tax shocks. We provide new evidence for the U.S. over the period 1955-2006. We...

In recent years a number of European countries have shifted their tax structure more strongly towards indirect taxes, motivated, inter alia, by the intention to foster competitiveness. Against this background, this paper develops a tractable two-country model of a monetary union, characterised...

We characterize the Laffer curves for labor taxation and capital income taxation quantitatively for the US, the EU-14 and individual European countries by comparing the balanced growth paths of a neoclassical growth model featuring ”constant Frisch elasticity” (CFE) preferences. We derive...

The paper uses an applied general equilibrium model, calibrated to the situation in Belgium in 1990, to evaluate the welfare effects of small policy changes in the presence of transport externalities. The model incorporates three types of externalities: congestion, which has a feedback effect on...