Archive: December 2015

Tax Expenditures Deserve Far More Scrutiny

| 30 December 2015
Fiscal, Blog | Tags: Tax Expenditures, UK
Last month, the UK government presented its Spending Review, setting out departmental budgets for the next four years. There were protections for some departments and large cuts (though smaller than expected) for others. Coming after years of previous cuts, many departmental budgets by 2019 will ... continue reading

Paris to Nairobi

| 23 December 2015
Trade, Blog | Tags: Climate, India, TPP, TTIP, WTO
Trade negotiations didn’t have the happy ending of COP-21. But they portend major changes for the WTO. This month has witnessed two important events whose outcomes point to different conclusions for the future of multilateral cooperation. While the Paris Agreement belied pessimistic expectations and produced ... continue reading

Boosting R&D through Patent Boxes. Panacea or Not?

| 10 December 2015
Fiscal, Blog | Tags: BEPS, Innovation, Tax Competition, Tax Expenditures
On October 5th, the OECD presented the final package of the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative – a cornerstone in the international drive towards corporate tax reform. ... continue reading

The Distributional Implications of the Crisis and Policy Responses

| 8 December 2015
Monetary, Blog | Tags: Inequality, QE
The conduct of monetary policy over the last few years is totally unprecedented. Efforts have been made to influence all parts of the term structure of interest rates and credit spreads as well. Policy rates have been reduced essentially to zero. Forward guidance has also ... continue reading