The paper examines 157 German listed corporations that had the option of changing their fiscal year to achieve a possible tax reduction in connection with the major tax reform of 2000/2001. The tax reduction from a change was larger, the larger the expected profits. However, with costs of...

Dass Steuern ökonomische Entscheidungen beeinflussen, ist unbestritten. Für die Politik ist es daher elementar, etwas über die Auswirkungen des Steuerrechts auf das Verhalten der Steuerpflichtigen zu wissen. Die Analyse einer vergangenen Steuerreform als natürliches Experiment kann vor...

CO2 emissions are disproportionately caused by more affluent consumers. In the political debate, this fact has triggered the demand for income redistribution and wealth taxes not only to reduce inequality but also to reduce CO2 emissions. This paper calculates the possible size of such a green...

Following numerous high-profile international initiatives, tax haven jurisdictions have been nudged into agreeing on tax information exchange. We analyse whether these agreements had measurable effects on the economy of cooperative tax havens. As GDP data are missing for many small tax haven...

Concentrated ownership of large listed companies is widespread throughout the world, and Germany is typical in this respect. This paper proposes a method of distinguishing empirically between the beneficial and harmful effects of ownership concentration, and applies it to German data. The...

This paper considers the efficiency of a contestable natural monopoly if consumers are heterogeneous and the monopolist can differentiate prices imperfectly. With restricted entry, the standard result in this case is that the monopoly offers a menu of price-quantity combinations which leads to...

This paper reconsiders the welfare effects of tariff jumping direct investment if mobile capital is subjected to taxation. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, the receiving country may in this case gain from the incremental inflow of capital, as this diverts tax revenues from the rest of the...

The residence-based taxation of interest income in the EU faces the difficulty that taxpayers may evade taxation by holding bank accounts in other countries. The EU therefore makes considerable efforts to achieve cooperation among EU member states in order to improve tax enforcement. The present...

The paper looks at the determinants of fiscal adjustments as reflected in the primary surplus of countries. Our conjecture is that governments will usually find it more attractive to pursue fiscal adjustments in a situation of relatively high growth, but based on a simple stylized model of...

The paper uses fiscal reaction functions for a panel of euro-area countries to investigate whether euro membership has reduced the responsiveness of countries to shocks in the level of inherited debt compared to the period prior to succession to the euro. While we find some evidence for such a...