Ökonometrische Inflationsanalyse für Österreich 1960/1975

Summary The following econometric study analyses the inflationary process in Austria since 1960. Price equations are estimated for the period 1960/1973 and several subperiods with quarterly and yearly data, forecasts of the development of the GNP-deflator and the consumer price index are made for 1974 and 1975. In this way it is possible to quantify the relative importance of inflationary factors and to test the stability of the price determination structures. Special emphasis is laid on the rôle of monetary variables and of price expectations in the process of price determination.The conclusion of the study is that accelerating inflation in the 70ies can be explained by the same factors than creeping inflation of the 50ies and 60ies. Inflation has always been of a mixed type, though the relative weight of cost, demand, monetary and expectational variables changed during the observation period. There is no sign that a new type of inflation with new behaviour patterns was emerging in the last years. Even the extraordinary (externally influenced) price rise in 1974 can be explained by price functions of traditional structure. Forecasts for 1975 show no substantial diminuation of inflationary pressures.     

Firm-specific forward-looking effective tax rates

This paper computes effective (marginal and average) tax rates that account for bilateral aspects of taxation and, therefore, vary across country-pairs and years. These tax rates serve to estimate the impact of corporate taxation on outbound stocks of bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) among OECD countries between 1991 and 2002. The findings indicate that outbound FDI is positively related to the parent and host country tax burden and negatively associated with bilateral effective tax rates. Relying only on unilateral (country and time variant) rather than on both unilateral and bilateral (country-pair and time variant) effective tax rates leads to biased estimates of the impact of corporate taxation on FDI.