This article discusses whether supply chain due diligence laws are a suitable instrument for goals of sustainability. It uses the German due diligence law as an example and makes recommendations for the design of European rules. The emerging evidence on the effect of trade policies in global...

We develop a theory of tax reforms for a setting with multi-dimensional heterogeneity amongst taxpayers and multiple economic decisions that are all subject to fixed and variable costs. The theorems in this paper provide a complete characterization of the conditions under which Pareto- or...

This paper begins with a survey of the literature on the political economy approaches to labor income taxation. We focus on recent progress made by examining in detail the specific properties of non-linear taxes derived in the context of voting. Next, we present new results on the existence of...

This paper studies the tax treatment of couples. We develop two different approaches. One is tailored to the analysis of tax systems that stick to the principle that the tax base for couples is the sum of their incomes. One is tailored to the analysis of reforms toward individual taxation. We...

We develop a new approach for the identification of Pareto‐improving tax reforms. This approach yields necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of Pareto‐improving reform directions. A main insight is that “Two brackets are enough”: When the system cannot be improved by...

We study Downsian competition in a Mirrleesian model of income taxation. The competing politicians may differ in competence. If politicians engage in vote-share maximization, the less competent politician's policy proposals are attractive to the minority of rich agents, whereas those of the...

We study the political economy of policy innovations during the U.S. welfare reform in 1996. Specifically, we investigate how reputation concerns among governors influence the decision to experiment with welfare policies. In line with a political agency model, our empirical results suggest that...

We analyze data from an author-conducted survey of members of the French and German parliaments on European Monetary Union reform preferences. We consider three potential drivers of preferences: nationality, ideology, and personal characteristics. For European Monetary Union policies like...

The "multicrisis" of European integration from the euro debt crisis through the migration dispute to Brexit has kicked-off a comprehensive reform debate. This debate covers the evolution of European Monetary Union (EMU) institutions, the division of competencies between the EU and Member States,...