All good comes at a price. The German corporatetax reform is good overall,1 but the major benefit,the tax rate cut, comes with a tightened andhighly detrimental change of ownership rule. TheGerman term Mantelkauf, literally translated as‘‘coat purchase,’’ is deceiving — it sounds and...

European Union law has an increasing impact on the development of Member States' taxation powers. This is particularly evident in the case of sub-central entities, such as the Autonomous Communities. These limits are themselves in a process of transformation, so it is not always easy to know in...

The new institutional economics offers a bold and simple argument for how states promoted commercial expansion in early modern Europe. Focused on the importance of secure property rights for reducing transaction costs, commerce expands much as an engine burns fuel more efficiently and creates...

The ability to cooperate in collective action problems — such as those relating to the useof common property resources or the provision of local public goods — is a key determinant ofeconomic performance. In this paper we discuss two aspects of collective action problemsin developing...

Based on practitioners’ experience of making things work on the ground, severalcommon themes emerged. These themes prompted questions about how success can bereplicated, how to overcome obstacles, and what role government can play.The themes were:• scaling down and linking up;• cutting...

The computational properties of an econometric method are fundamentaldeterminants of its importance and practical usefulness, in conjunction withthe method’s statistical properties. Computational methods in econometricsare advanced through successfully combining ideas and methods in...

We apply the property rights theory of Grossman-Hart-Moore in the musicindustry and study the optimal allocation of copyright between the artistswho create music and the labels who promote and distribute it. Digital tech-nology opens up a role for new intermediaries. We …nd that entry of...

This paper explores the consequences of creating and improvingproperty rights so that …xed assets can be used as collateral. Thishas become a cause célèbre of Hernando de Soto whose views areinfluential in debates about policy reform concerning property rights.Hence, we refer to the economic...