Taxing education in Ramsey's tradition

Assuming a two-period model with endogenous choices of labour, education, and saving, it is shown to be second-best efficient to deviate from Ramsey's Rule and to distort qualified labour less than nonqualified labour. Furthermore, if the earnings function displays constant elasticity, the choice of education should not be distorted. With the necessary qualifications the results extend to the case when taxpayers are heterogeneous and when the planner trades off efficiency against equity.     

Zur Lage der Kommunikationswissenschaft und ihrer Fachgesellschaft. Ergebnisse der DGPuK-Mitgliederbefragung 2003

Like other broad disciplines in the media/communications field, communication science is characterized by rapid growth and increasing diversity and hence confusion. That also affects the discipline’s scholarly associations. So the German Association for Communication Science (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, DGPuK), the largest German-speaking association in this field, conducted a survey among its members in early 2003. This article reports on the design and findings of this study, focusing on the perception and evaluation of the association and on the scholarly orientations (theoretic perspectives and methodologies) of its members. Various subgroups within the DGPuK diverge in their positions and opinions. This applies in particular to the less well represented research traditions and subdisciplines (as compared to the social-scientific mainstream), which tend to view the DGPuK as one-sided. Deviations also show for professionals working outside the academic field (as compared to DGPuK members from universities) and in part for older members and women. The findings not only give an up-to-date picture of the state of the DGPuK but also shed light on the situation and development of the discipline as a whole.     

Globalization, Financial Volatility and Monetary Policy

Recently it has often been claimed that globalization eases the job of central banks as it helps to tame inflation. This is used to argue that central banks (particularly the ECB, referring to the objectives as laid down in the EU Treaty) could or should reduce their efforts in the fight against inflation in favor of supporting the general economic policies of the governments. This paper takes a critical look at this argument, pointing to the structural changes associated with globalization and to the corresponding increase in uncertainty by which the central banks are affected. As an example of this, the increase in financial volatility is analyzed and explained as the result of optimal portfolio allocation, and its implications for monetary policy are discussed.     

Leisure and Consumer Culture in Japan

This paper uses the lens of Charles Chesnutt’s short story collection, Conjure woman (1899 Chesnutt, C.W. 1899. The conjure woman, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.  [Google Scholar]) and other tales of his in the same genre, to focus some of the theoretical problems and ontological struggles existing at the nexus of African‐American labour and leisure in the late nineteenth‐century US. Specifically, it illuminates an African‐American counterculture of incorporation. While the national incorporation of political, economic and cultural interests required the disavowal of black citizenship, African‐Americans defended their claims to national inclusion and attempted to repair the ravages of slavery and segregation on black bodies and black memory.     

The hard shadow of the Greek economy: new estimates of the size of the underground economy and its fiscal impact

This article presents new estimates of the Greek underground economy and explores the link between the underground economy and aggregate debt. We show that the Greek underground economy has been underestimated heavily and has been on a rising trend again since Greece adopted the Euro. We also present evidence that the size of the underground economy is positively related to the debt-to-GDP ratio, implying that fighting the underground economy is also conducive to financial and macroeconomic stability. Our results suggest that for our sample of 11 EMU member countries, the loss of the inflation tax as an economic policy instrument had drastic consequences. While the underground economy did not have a statistically significant impact on aggregate debt before the introduction of the Euro, it has pushed up the debt-to-GDP ratio in our sample since.     

An Efficiency Analysis of Consumption and Production Taxation with an Application to Value-Added Taxation

The usual arguments pro destination-based, consumption-oriented or pro origin-based, production-oriented VAT are found wanting. They largely ignore tax effects on locational choices of firms. This paper provides a comparison of consumption and production taxation within a model of firm and household mobility. It is shown that the case for consumption taxation becomes stronger when profit taxes are not available. The consumption tax is the more targeted instrument when households are to be induced to locate efficiently. It is argued that, with border controls lacking, the alternative option should be seen more in a wage tax and less in a production tax.