Publications

Energy Subsidies – Widespread, Significant, and Largely Not Reaching the Poor

| 18 April 2016
Fiscal, Blog | Tags: Energy, Inequality, Subsidies
Energy subsidies are widespread and significant. In 2014, according to the IEA (2015), government support for global fossil fuel consumption amounted to 490 billion US$. An IMF working paper (Coady et al., 2015) reports even higher numbers. Distinguishing between subsidies before (pre) and after (post) ... continue reading

Multinational tax avoidance in developing countries

, and | 7 April 2016
Fiscal, Blog | Tags: Corporate Taxes, Development, Tax Avoidance
In recent years many global firms—including Starbucks, Google, and Amazon—have come under fire for avoiding paying taxes in one country by shifting their profits to a country with lower tax rates. ... continue reading

Finance, Growth and Inequality

and | 31 March 2016
Fiscal, Monetary, Blog | Tags: Financial Markets, Inequality
Finance is the lifeblood of modern economies, but too much of the wrong type of finance can hamper economic prosperity and social cohesion. We have taken a holistic approach to study the consequences of finance for the inclusiveness of growth, in the spirit of the ... continue reading

Monetary Policy According to HANK

, and | 10 March 2016
Monetary, Working Papers | Tags: Inequality, Interest Rates
We revisit the transmission mechanism of monetary policy for household consumption in a Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) model. The model yields empirically realistic distributions of household wealth and marginal propensities to consume because of two key features: multiple assets with different degrees of liquidity ... continue reading

Trade and Employment. An Overview

| 29 February 2016
Trade, Discussion Notes | Tags: Employment
The bulk of economic research on the impacts of trade has for a long time neglected aggregate effects on jobs. While research grants an important role of trade for employment, empirical studies often struggle to attribute employment outcomes to trade policies in the long run. ... continue reading