This paper investigates the relationship between government debt and labour taxation for a panel of 18 EU countries over the period 1979-2008. The econometric estimates point to a statistically significant and economically relevant positive response of labour taxation to changes in the general...

Die von der Bundesregierung geplante Steuerreform soll die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit deutscher Unternehmen stärken und den Standort Deutschland für in- und ausländische Investoren attraktiver machen. Berechnungen des ZEW und der Universität Mannheim zeigen indessen: Die Steuerentlastung der...

Using the DYMIMIC approach, estimates of the shadow economy in 145 developing, transition, developed OECD countries, South Pacific islands and still communist countries are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (in percent of official GDP) over 2002/2003 in developing countries is...

Economists traditionally tackle normative problems by computing optimal policy, i.e. the one that maximizes a social welfare function. In practice, however, a succession of marginal changes to a limited number of policy instruments are implemented, until no further improvement is feasible. I...

This paper analyses how tax morale and countries’ institutional quality affect the shadow economy, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a variety of potential factors. The literature strongly emphasizes the quantitative importance of these factors to understand the level and changes of...

Assuming decreasing returns to education and the endogenous supply of qualified and nonqualified labour it is shown to be efficient to supplement a consumption tax with positive incentives for education. If the return from education is isoelastic and if the choice is between (i) subsidizing the...

We investigate the optimal nonlinear wage and interest-income taxes with money as an asset, assuming that there are two types of labor, which are not perfect substitutes in production, and that each type is difficult for the policymaker to observe. It is shown that the optimal interest-income...

Alternative ways to organize government subsidies to unemployment insurance (UI) are analyzed in a right-to-manage model where industry-level unions run UI funds of their own. It is shown that equilibrium unemployment is decreasing in the share of UI financed by the employed union members. A...

It is assumed that education simultaneously affects growth and wage inequality. Human capital is taken as lumpy, and education policy has a direct bearing on growth, the number of high-skilled people, and wages. It is shown that the optimal policy for the unskilled is Rawlsian and implies high...

The paper summarizes the arguments in favor of a shift from comprehensive to dual income taxation and complements the discussion by an overview of tax reforms, which reveals the characteristic features of a dual income tax system. The scope of our analysis is not restricted to the Nordic...