/pdf/the-theory-of-industrial-organization-19bejph0ej.pdf

The Theory of Industrial Organization

A detailed review of the education sector in Australia as in the data provided by the 2006 edition of the OECD's annual publication, 'Education at a Glance' is presented. While the data has shown that in almost all OECD countries educational attainment levels are on the rise, with countries showing impressive gains in university qualifications, it also reveals that a large of share of young people still do not complete secondary school, which remains a baseline for successful entry into the labour market.

/pdf/education-at-a-glance-m5vl7o68j5.pdf

Education at a Glance

A central message of the tax competition literature is that independent governments engage in wasteful competition for scarce capital through reductions in tax rates and public expendi- ture levels. This paper discusses many of the contributions to this literature, ranging from early demonstrations of wasteful tax com- petition to more recent contributions that identify efficiency- enhancing roles for competition among governments. Such roles involve considerations not present in earlier models, including im- perfectly-competitive market structures, government commitment problems, and political economy considerations.

/pdf/theories-of-tax-competition-42jqcatw8x.pdf

Theories of Tax Competition

In recent years a widespread consensus has emerged about the necessity of establishing bridges between the quantitative and the qualitative approaches to empirical research in political science. In this article, we discuss the use of the synthetic control method (Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2003; Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller, 2010) as a way to bridge the quantitative/qualitative divide in comparative politics. The synthetic control method provides a systematic way to choose comparison units in comparative case studies. This systematization opens the door to precise quantitative inference in small-sample comparative studies, without precluding the application of qualitative approaches. That is, the synthetic control method allows researchers to put \qualitative esh on quantitative bones" (Tarrow, 1995). We illustrate the main ideas behind the synthetic control method with an application where we study the economic impact of the 1990 German reunication in West Germany.

/pdf/comparative-politics-and-the-synthetic-control-method-xvbyyvbg3z.pdf

Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method

Drawing on a wide range of literature and ideas, a new “second-generation theory of fiscal federalism” is emerging that provides new insights into the structure and working of federal systems. After a restatement and review of the first-generation theory, this paper surveys this new body of work and offers some thoughts on the ways in which it is extending our understanding of fiscal federalism and on its implications for the design of fiscal institutions.

http://web.stanford.edu/~jrodden/oates.pdf

Toward A Second-Generation Theory of Fiscal Federalism

The countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol have pledged to limit global warming by reducing the demand for fossil fuels. But what about supply? If suppliers do not react, demand reductions by a subset of countries are ineffective. They simply depress the world price of carbon and induce the environmental sinners to consume what the Kyoto countries have economized on. Even worse, if suppliers feel threatened by a gradual greening of economic policies in the Kyoto countries that would damage their future prices; they will extract their stocks more rapidly, thus accelerating global warming. The paper discusses the remaining policy options against global warming from an intertemporal supply-side perspective.

/pdf/public-policies-against-global-warming-a-supply-side-2nh4lcmsy4.pdf

Public policies against global warming: a supply side approach

The selection principle and market failure in systems competition

The welfare state can be seen as an insurance device that makes lifetime careers safer, increases risk taking and suffers from moral hazard effects. Adopting this view, the paper studies the trade-off between average income and inequality, evaluating redistributive equilibria from an allocative point of view. It studies the problem of optimal redistributive taxation with tax-induced risk taking and shows that constant returns to risk taking are likely to imply a paradox where more redistribution results in more post-tax inequality. In general, optimal taxation will either imply that the redistribution paradox is present or that the economy operates at a point of its efficiency frontier where more inequality implies a lower average income.

A Theory of the Welfare State

Introduction. Introduction to the Theory of Intertemporal Allocation. Fisher, Solow, and the General Intertemporal Equilibrium. Taxes and the Decision Problem of the Firm. Taxation and the Financial Decisions of the Firm. Investment, Finance, and Taxation. Taxation, Industry Structure, and the Legal Status of Firms. Taxation and International Capital Movements. Intertemporal General Equilibrium with Taxation. Taxation and Economic Growth. Dynamic Incidence. Alternatives to Capital Income Taxation. Appendixes. Indexes.

Capital income taxation and resource allocation

Opening Europe's borders in 1993 makes the allocation of resources more vulnerable to differences in the national tax rates. The first part of the paper demonstrates that direct consumer purchases will imply distortions resulting from diverging VAT rates and it clarifies why the frequently cited exchange rate argument is of no help. The second part shows that, in the case of direct taxation, a harmonization of tax bases is more important than a harmonization of tax rates. Either the combination of true economic depreciation and residence taxation or the combination of immediate write-off and source taxation will result in an efficient international allocation of capital, independent of the national tax rates. The paper concludes with a verdict on tax competition arguing that free migration renders a policy of income redistribution, which is interpreted as insurance against the risk of lifetime careers, impossible.

Hans-Werner Sinn

Papers

Public policies against global warming: a supply side approach

The selection principle and market failure in systems competition

A Theory of the Welfare State

Capital income taxation and resource allocation

Tax harmonization and tax competition in Europe