It is a widely acknowledged result of the literature on international tax competition that an inefficient provision of public goods can only be avoided, if taxes are sufficiently coordinated. In this paper we use a model where governments use commodity and factor taxes in the tax competition...

The paper surveys coordination requirements for a final European VAT (short for viable integrated VAT) system. Using a set of criteria that can be identified from the EU VAT program for the single market, we analyze the potential superiority of the Commission's 1996 VAT proposal and four...

In the modern welfare state a substantial part of an individual's tax bill is transferred back to the same individual taxpayer in the form of social transfers. This provides a rationale for financing part of social insurance through mandatory savings accounts. We analyze the behavioral and...

Most systems of health care financing in EU member states currentlyinclude elements of income redistribution. The paper analyzesthe effects of shifting this kind of redistribution to the taxsystem and argues that this reform could create two types ofefficiency gains. On the expenditure side, it...

Recent work has started to analyze the choice of international commodity tax base under conditions of imperfect competition. This paper focuses on the effects of changing levels of trade barriers in a model where firms engage in duopoly competition and governments set commodity taxes...