Countries seeking membership in the European Union (EU) cannot look to the EU for a blueprint for reforming their system for taxing capital income. Indeed, it is hard to generalize about tax systems in the EU. Most member states apply fairly low tax rates to interest payments and discriminate...

The authors assess the macroeconomic and distributional effects of the privatization that Argentina began in 1989 in gas, electricity, telecommunications, and water and sanitation. Using a computable general equilibrium model, they track the effects of the changes observed between 1993, the...

Driven by fiscal austerity and disenchantment with the performance of state-provided infrastructure services, many governments have turned to the private sector to build, operate, finance, or own infrastructure in power, gas, water, transport, and telecommunications sectors. Private capital...

The main purpose of this paper is to describe the evolution of the financing structure of regulated privatized utilities and transport companies. To do so, the authors rely on a sample of 121 utilities distributed over 16 countries, and 23 transport infrastructure operators and 23 transport...

The case study on the U.S. Treasury Direct examines the evolution of the electronic distribution systems for marketable and nonmarketable government securities, the main objectives, and the basic legal infrastructure and the preconditions enabling the system. The U.S. experience highlights that...

The emergence in the 1990s of a nascent project bond market to fund long-term infrastructure projects in developing countries merits attention. The authors compile detailed information on a sample of 105 bonds issued between January 1993 and March 2002 for financing infrastructure projects in...

Recent debate about the pro-cyclical effects of bank capital requirements, has ignored the important role that bank loan loss provisions play in the overall framework of minimum capital regulation. It is frequently observed that under-provisioning, due to inadequate assessment of expected credit...

With an increasing number of governments competing to attract multinational companies, fiscal incentives have become a global trend that has grown considerably in the 1990s. Poor African countries rely on tax holidays, and import duty exemptions, while industrial Western European countries allow...

The paper begins by outlining the major administrative and compliance issues of a cash flow tax. There are problems with the system because of the numerous possibilities for gaming the system. The paper goes on to discuss the problems involved in the transition from a corporate income tax to a...

The authors present new data on the regulation of the entry of start-up firms in 85 countries. The data cover the number if procedures, official time, and official costs that a start-up firm must bear before it can operate legally. The official costs of entry are extremely high in most...