Sharing the Burden? Empirical Evidence on Corporate Tax Incidence

This study investigates the direct incidence of the corporate income tax (CIT) through wage bargaining, using an industry‐region level panel dataset on all corporations in Germany over the period 1998–2006. For the first time we account for employment effects which result from tax‐induced wage changes. Workers share in reductions of the CIT burden; yet, the net effect of wage bargaining on the corporate wage bill, after an exogenous €1 decrease in the CIT burden, is as little as 19–28 cents. This is about half of the effect obtained in prior literature focussing on wages alone.     

CONTAGIOUS POLICIES: AN ANALYSIS OF SPATIAL INTERACTIONS AMONG COUNTRIES' CAPITAL ACCOUNT POLICIES

Countries' capital account policies might be contagious in the sense that domestic policies are driven by other countries' policies. A model of strategic interactions is developed to show that countries' best response to policy changes elsewhere consists in imitating this policy. Using a spatial econometric model, the hypothesis of policy interactions is tested in a large panel data set. The evidence shows that capital account policies are contemporaneously correlated across countries. Concerning fundamentals, the move to a fixed exchange rate regime and an increase in real world interest rates are correlated with the imposition of capital account restrictions.     

The Market Response to Restructuring: A Behavioral Model

In this paper, I model the behavior of producers, consumers, and regulators in deciding to restructure the electricity sector and estimate their equilibrium response to the newly restructured market. The empirical model consists of simultaneous price and restructuring equations with endogenous switching and cross-equation correlation in the errors. This approach allow me to account for the influence of special interest groups and potential selection bias in which countries choose to restructure. I estimate distinct shifts from restructuring in both industrial and residential prices, and for English speaking, Scandinavian, and South American countries. I find that in all countries, it is industrial consumers that experience the price effects of restructuring, while residential consumers remain largely unaffected. In English speaking and Scandinavian countries, industrial prices decrease while in South American countries they increase. This is consistent with the political–economic environment in which these countries have considered restructuring.     

Optimal top marginal tax rates under income splitting for couples

This paper provides formulas for optimal top marginal tax rates when couples are taxed according to income splitting between spouses, consumption is taxed, and the skill distribution is unbounded. Optimal top marginal income tax rates are computed for Germany using a dataset that includes the tax returns of all German top taxpayers. We find that the optimal top marginal tax rate converges to about 2/3 and convergence obtains at income levels that are substantially higher than those currently subject to the actual top tax rate.     

Are Uniform Solutions Focal? – The Case of International Environmental Agreements

The application of uniform solutions has several drawbacks, notably their lack of cost efficiency and their inability to guarantee individual rationality. A proper specification of uniform solutions, however, reveals that uniform solutions that satisfy individual rationality always exist. When all countries hold private information about their own reduction costs, there only exists one solution that always satisfies individually rationality without use of side payments and the requirement of dominant strategy implementation: The solution that selects the smallest individually preferred uniform reduction which also give a theoretical explanation of the lowest common denominator effect.     

Household survey data for research on well-being and behavior in Central Asia

This paper summarizes the micro-level survey evidence from Central Asia generated and analyzed in the period 1991–2012. We provide an exhaustive overview over all accessible individual and household-level surveys undertaken in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – and of all academic papers published using these datasets. We argue that Central Asia is a fascinating region for the study of comparative economics given its dual experience of transition and development. However, the region is also understudied, in part due to lack of data, and especially due to a lack of panel data. We identify knowledge gaps derived from this lack of longitudinal surveys and suggest worthwhile areas for future research. Finally, we also present a new and novel individual-level panel dataset called “Life in Kyrgyzstan”.     

The Tax‐rate Elasticity of Local Business Profits

Local business profits respond to local business tax (LBT) rates that vary across municipalities. We estimate that a 1% increase in the LBT rate decreases the LBT base by 0.45%, based on the universe of German LBT return files, which include corporations and unincorporated businesses. However, the fiscal equalization scheme largely compensates municipalities for the loss in the LBT base when they increase the LBT rate. Our estimates suggest that using tax revenue data instead of tax return data, as commonly done in the literature, results in a significant bias of the elasticity away from zero.     

Merger remedies involving restructuring costs in a Cournot framework

We analyze the effects of structural merger remedies in a Cournot framework. In particular, we extend a basic model approach by introducing restructuring investments that are necessary to implement divestiture remedies. We assume that such investments increase the merging parties’ marginal cost of production and show that they therefore reinforce the effect of divestitures on post-merger competition. As a consequence, if the competition authority does not take restructuring investments into account while fixing the remedies, the size of the divestiture will be too large and hence over-fix the competition issue. This not only causes an unduly increase of the market power of the competitor but also reduces the synergy gains of the merging parties and therefore hurts consumers in the affected markets.