Teaching Bioeconomics

Bioeconomics is a relatively young field that uses an expanded microeconomics to examine animal behavior, human behavior, and animal and human social institutions. A voluminous literature is rapidly accumulating. There are as yet no standard textbooks, but there are several excellent books and/or articles that can be used in combination with videos and other aids to make a course that students will enjoy and that teachers can use to advance the frontiers of scholarship in economics and biology.*Invited editorial     

Is there Regional Tax Competition? Firm Level Evidence for Belgium

Summary This is the first paper that looks at regional tax competition within one single country. In many countries in Europe, regions within a country differ substantially in their economic development and attractiveness to firms. Belgium is a typical example of a country where the economic situation of its three regions is very different. Our findings are indicative of regional tax competition, with a lower Effective Tax Rate (ETR) in the peripheral region of Wallonia than in Flanders. In addition to location variables, our empirical model explaining firm level heterogeneity in ETRs includes firm characteristics, sector membership and variables capturing statutory tax breaks. We thank the Research Council of the Catholic University of Leuven for funding this research. A special thanks goes to Jozef Konings, Willem Buijink, Laurence van Lent, Wim Moesen, Christophe Croux and Frans Vanistendael, for providing useful feedback on this project. We also thank participants of a LICOS-K.U.Leuven seminar and a doctoral workshop at the Universities of Maastricht and Antwerp for useful comments.     

Will Corporate Income Taxation Survive?

Summary This paper explores the future of corporate income taxation, with special reference to the Netherlands. We review the empirical literature on a variety of distortions and arbitrage opportunities and pay due attention to effect sizes. An attempt is made to compare the size of various distortions in terms of the ex-post revenue impact of a corporate tax reduction. Thus, we learn which distortions impose the most serious threat to government revenue. This integrative approach allows us to understand recent developments in corporate tax regimes in the EU. Erasmus University Rotterdam, CPB, CESifo and Tinbergen Institute. Corresponding address: P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, e-mail: demooij@few.eur.nl. I thank Leon Bettendorf, Joeri I thank Leon Bettendorf, Joeri Gorter and Gerbert Romijn for their support and discussion in constructing Table 3 and Sijbren Cnossen and two anonymous referees for useful comments.     

Corporate Effective Tax Rates in the Netherlands

Summary This paper investigates the actual size of tax incentives granted to Dutch companies by using financial statement data for 1592 companies for the 1994--1999 period. Empirical results indicate that Dutch effective tax rates do not differ much from statutory tax rates. Although capital intensity is negatively associated with effective tax rates, only a small portion of the variance in effective tax rates can be explained. This indicates that the actual size of tax incentives granted to companies in the Netherlands is quite small.Comments by the editor, two anonymous reviewers, Willem Buijink, Yvonne Schols and participants at the annual European Accounting Association congress are gratefully acknowledged.     

What are the Trade Spill-Overs from Fiscal Shocks in Europe? An Empirical Analysis***

We use a Vector Auto Regression (VAR) analysis to explore the (trade spill-over) effects of fiscal policy shocks in Europe. To enhance comparability with the existing literature, we first analyse the effects of these shocks at the national level. Here, we employ identification based on Choleski decomposition and a structural VAR, both of which lead to the same results. Then, we turn to study the cross-border spill-overs of fiscal shocks via the trade channel. Fiscal expansions in Germany, France and Italy lead to significant increases in imports from a number of European countries. In order to mimic the case of monetary union, we also shut off the effects via the short-term interest rate and the nominal exchange rate and find a slight strengthening on average of the cross-country spill-overs from a fiscal expansion. These results suggest that it may be worthwhile to further investigate the possibility of enhanced fiscal coordination.*** This research is part of the RTN project ‘Macroeconomic Policy Design for Monetary Unions’, funded by the European Commission (contract number HPRN-CT-2002-00237). We thank two anonymous referees, a referee for the ECB Working Paper series, Peter Claeys, David-Jan Jansen, Franc Klaassen, Roberto Perotti and audiences at the Dutch Central Bank and the CEPR/CREI Conference ‘Designing a Macroeconomic Policy Framework for Europe’ (Barcelona, 2004) for many helpful comments. A large part of this paper was written while Beetsma was visiting the Directorate-General for Research of the ECB. He thanks the ECB for the stimulating research environment. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not commit any of.cial institution. The usual disclaimer applies.     

The role of credibility in the cyclical properties of macroeconomic policies in emerging economies

Optimal stabilization policy is countercyclical, aiming at keeping output close to its potential. However it has been traditionally argued that emerging countries are unable to adopt countercyclical monetary and fiscal policies. Here we argue that the cyclical properties of macroeconomic policies depend critically on policy credibility. We test this proposition by making use of recent panel data for eleven emerging market economies and time series data for Chile. The evidence supports that countries with higher credibility, as reflected by lower country risk levels, are able to conduct countercyclical fiscal and monetary policies. Conversely, countries with less credible policies (and, therefore, with higher country risk spreads) contribute to larger cyclical fluctuations by applying procyclical policies. For Chile we find that both monetary and fiscal policies have been largely countercyclical after 1993. JEL no. E43, E52, E62