Climate Change, Carbon Pricing and Energy Tax Expenditures
Agustin Redonda | 6 October 2016
Fiscal,
Blog | Tags:
Carbon Pricing,
Climate Change,
Energy,
Tax Expenditures
Climate change is moving up policy agendas worldwide. Last year’s COP21 was yet another wake-up call that the international community needs to take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The main outcome of the meeting, the Paris Agreement, was a significant milestone in
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South-South Preferential Trade Agreements in Services – Economic Potential Lying Idle
Charlotte Sieber-Gasser | 4 October 2016
Trade,
Blog | Tags:
Services Trade,
WTO
Imagine the Central African Republic and Cameroon investing in the compatibility and quality of their railway tracks, and eventually merging their railways altogether. The producers in the Central African Republic would get easy access to the sea, while Cameroon’s railway and ports would benefit from
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Quantitative Easing Is Back – But Will It Help the Real Economy?
Josh Ryan-Collins | 15 August 2016
Monetary,
Blog | Tags:
QE
Last week the Bank of England surprised commentators with the scale of its post-Brexit monetary stimulus package. It included a new £70bn round of quantitative easing (QE), the first since 2012, as well as the more widely predicted 0.25% cut to interest rates. The idea
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Governments Should Use Tax Systems to Drive Inclusive Growth Agenda
David Bradbury and
Bert Brys | 22 July 2016
Fiscal,
Blog | Tags:
Inequality,
Tax Expenditures,
Taxes
Tax policy design should play a key role in not only supporting growth but also in addressing distributional concerns. Taxes affect inequality through different channels. The most direct way in which taxes redistribute income is by narrowing the distribution of (post-tax) disposable income. Taxes can
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Are Tax Expenditures a Good Way to Redistribute?
Silvia Avram | 1 July 2016
Fiscal,
Blog | Tags:
Inequality,
Tax Expenditures,
Taxes
Since 2007, governments across several European countries have implemented cuts to their social programs in an attempt to tackle the fiscal deficits generated by the last economic and financial crisis. At the same time, they have increasingly made use of various tax related measures to
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Central Banking and Inequality – Taking Off the Blinders
Peter Dietsch,
Clément Fontan and
François Claveau | 16 June 2016
Monetary,
Blog | Tags:
Central Banks,
Ethics,
Inequality
Since the financial crisis, the relative importance of monetary policy in the toolbox of macroeconomic policies has increased. In parallel, we have seen a renewed social and political concern with rising inequalities in income and wealth. However, the two trends are rarely connected.[1] Despite studies
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Measuring and Understanding Trade in Service Tasks
Daniel Chiquiar,
Martín Tobal and
Renato Yslas | 24 May 2016
Trade,
Discussion Notes | Tags:
Employment,
Services Trade
Improvements in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have had differential impacts on the costs of offshoring service tasks. As a result, services with stronger tradability characteristics are at a higher risk of being offshored. This has increased the need for coming up with proper measures
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Energy Subsidies – Widespread, Significant, and Largely Not Reaching the Poor
Fernando Navajas | 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)
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Multinational tax avoidance in developing countries
Niels Johannesen,
Thomas Tørsløv and
Ludvig Wier | 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.
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Finance, Growth and Inequality
Boris Cournède and
Oliver Denk | 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
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