Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne ZusammenfassungAus dem Französischen übersetzt von Alexander Gerschenkron, WienAus dem Italienischen übersetzt von Alexander Gerschenkron, WienÜbersetzung aus dem Italienischen von Erich Allina, WienAus dem Italienischen übersetzt von Erich Allina, Wien     

IATA—A cartel that needs reforming

On November 19,1971, during the 27th annual International Air Transportation Association’s ’ IATA ’ meeting, a new fare structure on the North Atlantic route was reached. Has this new agreement saved IATA as “a system of freely arrived-at and freely-respected basic rules”, or does this new accord only serve to mask, with difficulty, the “pile of debris”?     

Sharing Money Creation in a Monetary Union*

How to share money creation among the members of the European Monetary Union? To address this issue, we construct a two‐country New Open‐economy Macroeconomics model of an asymmetric monetary union with an incomplete financial market and home bias in consumption. We consider two sharing rules consistent with the current regulations of the European System of Central Banks. First, each participating National Central Bank supplies half of the European Central Bank determined money creation in the monetary union. Secondly, each National Central Bank adapts the national increase in money demand, under the constraint that the total money creation in the union does not exceed the level determined by the ECB for the whole union. We show that the current sharing rule, which ignores countries’ heterogeneity, is superior in terms of welfare. The key role of the current account is emphasized. It proves an efficient decentralized mechanism for allocation of money.     

Ein Test zum Erkennen von Exponentialverteilungen

Zusammenfassung Es wird ein statistisches Testverfahren beschrieben, mit dessen Hilfe nach einer Stichprobennahme entschieden wird, ob es sich bei der betrachteten Verteilung einer Zufallsvariablen um eine Exponentialverteilung handelt oder nicht.

---

Summary A statistical test is described which permits to decide, whether the considered distribution of a random variable is an exponential distribution or not.

---

---

Mitteilung aus dem Zentral-Laboratorium der Siemens & Halske AG     

On International compensations for environmental stocks

This paper sheds some light on the possible implications of compensations which are paid for the maintenance of an environmental stock. It shows that serious complications can arise if the resource-owner may influence the compensation price strategically. If the incentive to raise the compensation price dominates the preservation incentive, the steady-state stock falls short from that which is voluntarily held. Whether compensation policies can neglect this feature depends crucially on the institutional setting which determines the compensation price.This paper originated from a research project about the stability of international environmental agreements. I gratefully acknowledge financial support by the Volkswagen Foundation. A predecessor of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Ausschuß für Umwelt- und Ressourcenökonomie of the Verein für Socialpolitik in Ladenburg. I am indebted to the participants for many helpful comments which improved this paper significantly. Thanks are also due to Gernot Klepper, Peter Michaelis and two anonymous referees whose comments and suggestions were very helpful. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Decomposition of s‐concentration curves

Abstract. For any given order of inverse stochastic dominance, standard concentration curves are decomposed into three components, called contribution curves. Those components correspond to within‐group inequalities, between‐group inequalities, and transvariational inequalities. We prove, for all orders, that contribution curve dominance implies systematically welfare‐improving tax reforms and conversely. Accordingly, as welfare expansions may be costly in terms of particular inequalities, we propose targeted fiscal reforms.     

Tax Evasion and Auditing in a Federal Economy

This paper analyzes the relation between tax auditing and fiscal equalization in the context of fiscal competition. We incorporate a model of tax evasion by firms into a standard tax competition framework where regional governments use their audit rates as a strategic instrument to engage in fiscal competition. We compare the region’s choice of audit policies for three different cases: A scenario of unconfined competition without interregional transfers, a scenario with a gross revenue equalization (GRS) scheme and finally, a scenario with net revenue sharing (NRS), where not only the revenues from taxation but also the regions auditing costs are shared. Without regional transfers, fiscal competition leads to audit rates which are inefficiently low for revenue-maximizing governments. While in general GRS aggravates the inefficiency, NRS makes the decentralized choice of auditing policies more efficient.JEL Code: H26, H71, H77