This paper examines the drivers, and reestimates the size of shadow economies in Europe, with a focus on the emerging economies, and recommends policies to increase formality. The size of shadow economies declined across Europe in recent years but remains significant, especially in Eastern Europe. In the emerging European economies, the key determinants of shadow economy size are regulatory quality, government effectiveness, and human capital. The paper argues that a comprehensive package of reforms, focused on country-specific drivers, is needed to successfully combat the shadow economy. The menu of policies most relevant for Europe’s emerging economies include: reducing regulatory and administrative burdens, promoting transparency and improving government effectiveness, as well as improving tax compliance, automating procedures, and promoting electronic payments.
Using administrative tax records for UK businesses, we document both bunching in annual turnover below the VAT registration threshold and persistent voluntary registration by almost half of the firms below the threshold. We develop a conceptual framework that can simultaneously explain these two apparently conflicting facts. The framework also predicts that higher intermediate input shares, lower product-market competition and a lower share of business to consumer (B2C) sales lead to voluntary registration. The predictions are exactly the opposite for bunching. We test the theory using linked VAT and corporation tax records from 2004-2014, finding empirical support for these predictions.
This paper studies the effect of the VAT threshold on firm growth in the UK, using exogenous variation over time in the threshold, combined with turnover bin fixed effects, for identification. We find robust evidence that annual growth in turnover slows by about 1 percentage point when firm turnover gets close to the threshold, with no evidence of higher growth when the threshold is passed. Growth in firm costs shows a similar pattern, indicating that the response to the threshold is likely to be a real response rather than an evasion response. Firms that habitually register even when their turnover is below the VAT threshold (voluntary registered firms) have growth that is unaffected by the threshold, whereas firms that select into the Flat-Rate Scheme have a less pronounced slowdown response than other firms. Similar patterns of turnover and cost growth around the threshold are also observed for non-incorporated businesses. Finally, simulation results clarify the relative contribution of ``crossers" (firms who eventually register for VAT) and ``non-crossers" (those who permanently stay below the threshold) in explaining our empirical findings.
Promoting the message of our Lord Jesus Christ to all the ends of the earth through the church, depopulating the kingdom of hell and expanding God's kingdom on earth and speaking the Bible language as led by the spirit of God to all situations, brethren and the heathen" and "Inviting to the church the less-privileged and unbelievers, providing for their immediate needs through several welfare schemes organized by the church and all its branches and ensuring that they hear the word of God for themselves" were the respective visions and missions that Fountain of Truth stood for. As conceptualized by the two founders, Reverend Michael Xhosa and Pastor Bode Damilola, with the former as the active front-man for the church, the church since its inception have been living up to the stated expectations.
Book 1. Packed full of 125+ pages of resources, worksheets and handouts with ideas for using them in the classroom. Photocopy and go with minimal lesson planning. TEFL Book is a series of 4 resource books that work together to make possibly the only collection of resources and worksheets you'll ever need. Over 1,000 pages of quality material in total, plus 15 educational songs (each downloadable in MP3 format), with worksheets. This collection has been updated September 2014.
The paper uses MULTIMOD to examine the implications of uncertain exchange rate pass-through for the conduct of monetary policy. From the policymaker''s perspective, uncertainty about exchange rate pass-through implies uncertainty about policy multipliers and the impact of state variables on stabilization objectives. When faced with uncertainty about the strength of exchange rate pass-through, policymakers will make less costly errors by overestimating the strength of pass-through rather than underestimating it. The analysis suggests that pass-through uncertainty of the magnitude considered does not result in efficient policy response coefficients that are smaller than those under certainty.
This paper studies whether exchange controls, particularly on the capital account, affect the choice of corporate tax rates, using a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1983-99. It builds on existing literature by (1) using a unique dataset with several different measures of the corporate tax rate calculated from the actual parameters of the tax systems, and (2i) allowing exchange controls to affect the intensity of strategic interaction between countries in setting taxes, as well as the levels of tax they choose. We find some evidence that (1) the level of a country’s tax, other things equal, is lowered by a unilateral liberalization of exchange controls; and (2) that strategic interaction in taxsetting between countries is increased by liberalization. These effects are stronger if the country is a high-tax one and if the tax is the statutory or effective average one. There is also evidence that countries’ own tax rates are reduced by liberalization of exchange controls in other countries.
The paper studies the dynamic allocation effects of tax policy in the context of an overlapping generations model of the Blanchard-Yaari type. The model is extended to allow for endogenous labor supply and three tax instruments: a capital income tax, labor income tax, and consumption tax. Analytical expressions and simple diagrams are used to discuss the impact, transition, and long-run effects of tax policy changes. It is shown that a part of the long-run incidence of capital and consumption taxes falls on capital when households’ horizons are finite, whereas labor would fully bear the burden of these taxes in an infinite horizon model.
Based on a version of the IMF’s new Global Economic Model (GEM), calibrated to analyze macroeconomic interdependence between the United States and the rest of the world, this paper asks to what extent an asymmetric productivity shock in the tradable sector of the economy may account for real exchange rate and trade balance developments in the United States in the second half of the 1990s. The paper concludes that the Balassa-Samuelson effect of such a productivity shock is only part of the story. A second shock, a broadly defined “risk premium” shock, and some uncertainty about the persistence of both shocks are needed to match the data more satisfactorily.
Over the past two years, the IMF staff has been developing a new multicountry macroeconomic model called the Global Economy Model (GEM). This paper explains why such a model is needed, how GEM differs from its predecessor model, and how the new features of the model can improve the IMF’s policy analysis. The paper is aimed at a general audience and avoids technical detail. It outlines the motivation, structure, strengths, and limitations of the model; examines three simulation exercises that have been completed; and discusses the future path of GEM.
This paper was prepared as part of a euro area macroeconomic model comparisons project. Four standard macroeconomic experiments are considered to illustrate the differences in dynamic adjustment properties of two versions of MULTIMOD, the IMF''s multicountry macroeconomic model. One version of MULTIMOD that is examined contains separate country blocks for the three major economies in the euro area, Germany, France, and Italy. The second, more recent version, contains a single block describing the behavior of the whole euro area.
This paper studies a principal-agent model of the relationship between an incumbent officeholder and the electorate, where the officeholder is initially uninformed about her ability. If officeholder effort and ability interact in the "production function" that determines performance in office, then an officeholder has an incentive to experiment-that is, raise effort so that performance becomes a more accurate signal of her ability. Elections reduce the experimentation effect, and the reduction in this effect may more than offset the positive "career-concerns" effect of elections on effort. Moreover, when this occurs, appointment of officeholders may Pareto-dominate elections.
A collection of 99 cool scripts and GML for GameMaker Studio. Learn to do lots of amazing things: zoom views, blood effects, save & load,cheat system, smoke effect, snow and rain, typewriter effect, check point system, scrolling credits and 90 more ideas to use in your games to give them a finishing touch. Suitable for all abilities.
The paper studies the employment effects of a deposit-refund scheme on labor in a simple search-theoretic model of the labor market. It is shown that if a firm pays a deposit to the government when it fires a worker, to be refunded when it employs the same or another worker, the vacancy rate increases and the unemployment rate declines. However, the scheme introduces rigidities in the labor market that may be undesirable in countries wanting to liberalize their labor markets.
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