We analyse a puzzle in the UK corporation tax: by both historic and international standards, corporation tax revenues have been high while the statutory rate has been reduced. We consider explanations based on changes in the tax law and in economic factors. Changes in the tax law, such as...

Traditional analysis of the taxation of income from capital has focused on the impact of tax on marginal investment decisions; the principal impact of tax on investment is through the cost of capital, and is generally measured by an effective marginal tax rate. In this paper, we consider cases...

There has much recent academic and policy interest in the issue of spatial clustering of economic activity, with most attention paid to the geographic concentration of high-tech industries. This paper describes patterns of geographic and industrial concentration in UK production industries at...

We analyse a puzzle in the UK corporation tax: by both historic and international standards corporation tax revenues have been high while the statutory rate has been low. Possible explanations include the following: changes in tax law that may have increased effective tax rates; other factors...

This paper investigates a set of strategic decisions facing US firms. We develop a simple theoretical framework in which firms choose whether or not to serve a foreign market, and if so whether by exporting, or by becoming a multinational. The model is applied to a sample of US firms choosing...

We examine whether discretionary government grants influence the location of new plants, and how effective these incentives are in the presence of agglomeration and urbanisation externalities. We find evidence that regional industrial structure affects the location of new entrants. Firms in more...

The transition of the eastern European countries into market-based economies and their potential integration into the European Union raise questions about how their capital income tax systems should be structured and to what extent they are in line with the rest of Europe. This note presents a...

The poor productivity performance of the UK and the EU when compared with the US has been a major driver of policy reforms over the past decade. This paper considers what the evidence suggests about why we have lagged behind the US, considering among other factors the importance of globalisation...

We analyze the impact of product market competition on unemployment and wages, and how this depends on labour market institutions. We use differential changes in regulations across OECD countries over the 1980s and 1990s to identify the effects of competition. We find that increased product...