Publications
The popular view is that governments should crack down on tax avoidance by multinational corporations, but in practice, lax anti-profit-shifting policies are common. Here, we analyze how controlling profit shifting influences fiscal competition. Equilibrium tax rates are determined by the elasticities of two components: retained profit and capital mobility. Anti-profit-shifting policies decrease the elasticity of the first, but increase the elasticity of the second. The impact of these policies on equilibrium tax rates is then ambiguous. We show that there are cases in which laxer policies increase equilibrium tax rates and countries’ well-being by favoring investments. We use estimates of different elasticities to show that our model can support lax enforcement.
We investigate the extent to which the irreversibility of pollution shapes the free-riding problems inherent in pollution (differential) games. To this end, we use two-country differential pollution games. Irreversibility is of a hard type: While strictly positive and concave below a certain threshold level of pollution, pollution decay drops to zero above this threshold. Assuming that the pollution damage function and preferences are quadratic, we first examine both the cooperative and non-cooperative versions of the game. We innovate in analytically demonstrating the existence of Markov perfect equilibria (MPE) and characterizing these. Second, we demonstrate that when players face the same pollution costs (symmetry), irreversible pollution regimes are more frequently reached than under cooperation, and we evaluate the irreversibility penalty stemming from the absence of cooperation. Incidentally, we prove that open-loop Nash equilibria lead to reach more frequently the irreversible regime than the MPE under our setting. Third, we study the implications of asymmetry in the pollution cost. We find that for equal total pollution costs, asymmetric equilibria produce a lower emission rate than the symmetric under some mild conditions, thereby driving the system to irreversibility less frequently than the latter. Finally, we prove that provided the irreversible regime is reached in both the symmetric and asymmetric cases, long-term pollution is greater in the symmetric case, reflecting more intensive free-riding under symmetry.
This paper investigates how affective forecasting errors (A.F.E.s), the difference between anticipated emotion and the emotion actually experienced, may induce changes in preferences on time, risk and occupation after combat. Building on psychological theories incorporating the role of emotion in decision-making, we designed a before-and-after-mission survey for Danish soldiers deployed to Afghanistan in 2011. Our hypothesis of an effect from A.F.E.s is tested by controlling for other mechanisms that may also change preferences: immediate emotion, trauma effect – proxied by post-traumatic stress disorder (P.T.S.D.) – and changes in wealth and risk perception. At the aggregate level, results show stable preferences before and after mission. We find positive A.F.E.s for all three emotions studied (fear, anxiety and excitement), with anticipated emotions stronger than those actually experienced. We provide evidence that positive A.F.E.s regarding fear significantly increase risk tolerance and impatience, while positive A.F.E.s regarding excitement strengthen the will to stay in the military. Trauma has no impact on these preferences.
We study how firm premia influence the gender wage gap for 21 European countries. We use a quadrennial harmonized matched employer–employee dataset to estimate gender-specific firm premia. Subsequently, we decompose the firm-specific wage premia differential into within- and between-firm components. On average, the former accounts mainly for the decline in the pay gap between 2002 and 2014. We pay particular attention to the development of each component by age group, and find that the between-firm component is associated with an increase in the gender pay gap over age. The decomposition of firm premia allows us to investigate how institutional settings relate to each component. We associate the within-firm component with collective bargaining at the national and firm levels, and the between-firm component with family policies. Decentralized wage bargaining is associated with a larger within-firm pay gap, whereas family policies incentivizing women to return to employment after family formation are linked to a smaller between-firm component.
This paper studies government spending multipliers in a panel of OECD countries. While recent literature has highlighted the differences in government consumption and investment effects, we extend this approach sectorally and report findings that suggest strong heterogeneities across sectors for government spending and output. Differences in price stickiness and sectors’ position in the production network are the main drivers of these heterogeneities.
In this paper, we evaluate the causal effects of climate policies on carbon emissions reduction. Specifically, we investigate the properties of the Granger causality test in the frequency domain, assuming that the dependent variables include a binary variable and a continuous variable (resp. treatment and outcome variables). Monte Carlo simulations confirm that: (i) this test is valid under this assumption; and (ii) it has more power than its time-domain counterpart. Then, using Sweden as a case study, we evaluate the impact of the Kyoto Protocol, the Swedish carbon tax, and the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on carbon emissions reduction over the period 1964–2021. Our empirical results indicate that only the carbon tax Granger causes carbon emissions reduction in the long run. Our methodological framework offers policymakers a useful toolbox for climate policy evaluation as well as new insights into the outcomes of international treaties and carbon pricing policies.
Based on French firm-level data, we evaluate the contribution of the micro-level profit-shifting –through tax haven foreign direct investments– to the aggregate productivity slowdown measured in France. We show that firm measured productivity in France declines over the years following the establishment in a tax haven, with an average estimated drop by 3.5% in apparent labor productivity. To isolate the contribution of multinational enterprises' (MNEs) tax optimization to the decline in productivity, we then exploit the 2006 Cadbury-Schweppes decision of the European Court of Justice limiting the extent to which member States can counter European MNEs' tax planning strategies. We find that multinational groups benefiting from that loosening of the legal constraints do exhibit a lower labor productivity following that ruling. Finally, given these firms' weight, our results imply an annual loss of 5.7% in terms of the aggregate annual labor productivity growth.
We experimentally investigate the impact of information disclosure on managing common harms that are caused jointly by a group of liable agents. Subjects interact in a public bad setting and must choose ex ante how much to contribute in order to reduce the probability of causing a common damage. If a damage occurs, subjects bear a part of the loss according to the liability-sharing rule in force. We consider two existing rules: a per capita rule and a proportional rule. Our aim is to analyze the relative impact of information disclosure under each rule. We show that information disclosure increases contributions only under a per capita rule. This result challenges the classical results regarding the positive effects of information disclosure, since we show that this impact may depend upon the legal context. We also show that while a proportional rule leads to higher contributions than a per capita one, the positive effect of disclosure on a per capita rule makes it as efficient as a proportional rule without information disclosure.
This paper shows how ethnic identities may become more salient due to natural resources extraction. We combine individual data on the strength of ethnic—relative to national—identities with geo-localised information on the contours of ethnic homelands, and on the timing and location of mineral resources exploitation in 25 African countries, from 2005 to 2015. Our strategy takes advantage of several dimensions of exposure to resources exploitation: time, spatial proximity and ethnic proximity. We find that the strength of an ethnic group identity increases when mineral resource exploitation in that group’s historical homeland intensifies. We argue that this result is at least partly rooted in feelings of relative deprivation associated with the exploitation of the resources. We show that such exploitation has limited positive economic spillovers, especially for members of the indigenous ethnic group; and that the link between mineral resources and the salience of ethnic identities is reinforced among members of powerless ethnic groups and groups with strong baseline identity feelings or living in poorer areas, or areas with a history of conflict. Put together, these findings suggest a new dimension of the natural resource curse: the fragmentation of identities, between ethnic groups and nations.
This paper analyses the impact of fiscal spending shocks in a dynamic, multi-country model with international production networks. The response of real gross domestic product to a fiscal spending shock can be decomposed into a direct effect, income effect and price effect. The direct effect depends only on input-output linkages, while the price effect is zero in the aggregate. We apply this decomposition to the Eurozone, and find that fiscal spillovers from Germany and the core Eurozone countries can be large, and within the range of empirical estimates. Without international production networks, spillovers would be significantly smaller. In an empirical application, using the decomposition, we find results strongly consistent with the model.
