The study looks at primary expenditure developments in the euro area, its three largest members and four “macro-imbalances” countries for the period 1999-2009. It compares actual expenditure trends with those that would have prevailed if countries had followed neutral policies based on...

We propose a method to capture the effect of tax reforms on consumer’s readiness to buy using Google searches as a proxy. We use the Spanish 2010 and 2012 VAT reforms as a case of study. We use a regression discontinuity design taking advantage of the fact that the Spanish 2010 and 2012 VAT...