Fiscal harmonization among the European Union member states is a goal involving major difficulties for its implementation. Each country faces a particular trade-off between fiscal revenues generated by taxation and the productive efficiency loss induced by their respective tax code. This paper...

This paper analyzes, within a regional growth model, the impact of productive governmental policy and integration on the spatial distribution of economic activity. Integration is understood as enhancing territorial cooperation between the regions, and it describes the extent to which one region...

Economies of scope arise from synergies in the production of similar goods. The classical notion of joint production explains instances of such synergies by the fact that some factors of production are pure public inputs. We argue that this explanation applies much more generally than is usually...

The level of revenues pocketed by a government during the fiscal year often deviates from that projected by this government in its budget. Despite a flourishing literature on, for example, the technical or procedural determinants of such forecast errors, little is yet known about how political...

This paper estimates the incidence of corporate taxes on wages using a 20-year panel of German municipalities. Administrative linked employer-employee data allows estimating heterogeneous worker and firm effects. We set up a general theoretical framework showing that corporate taxes can have a...

The local business tax as the main revenue source of local governments in Germany has been under extensive debate for decades. Proposals for reform range from a broad tax base in the sense of an origin-based value-added tax to a pure profit tax that could be implemented as a surcharge on...

We investigate the effect of general-purpose transfers on different expenditure categories and tax rates in the municipalities of Saxony (eastern Germany) and North Rhine-Westphalia (western Germany). Findings from the panel data analysis suggest the existence of the "flypaper effect" -...

Zur Gewerbesteuer gibt es eine Reihe von Reformvorschlägen, die von einer reinen Gewinnsteuer bis zu einer Wertschöpfungsteuer reichen. Entsprechende Besteuerungskonzepte sind auch im Ausland anzutreffen. Analysen mit dem Unternehmensteuer- Mikrosimulationsmodell BizTax des DIW Berlin zeigen...

We study the fiscal policy reactions of municipalities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia to an unanticipated spending shock. The implementation of a horizontal transfer system led to additional contributions for selected municipalities. Using the quasi-random assignment, we examine...