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The Diverse Structures of Passenger Car Taxation in Europe and the EU Commissions Proposal for Reform

In this study we first analyze duties on passenger cars in 27 European countries. Taxes and fees related to the registration, ownership and use of cars are assessed differently across Europe, and their rates vary significantly. We find that the annual taxes levied on specific types of cars differ across countries by a factor of up to four, while the variouskinds of duties levied account for extremely ...

Income Satisfaction and Relative Deprivation: An Empirical Link

This paper explores the relationship between two well-established concepts of measuring individual well-being: the concept of happiness, i.e. self-reported level of satisfaction with income, and relative deprivation, i.e. the gaps between the individual's income and the incomes of all individuals richer than him. Operationalizing both concepts using micro panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, ...

The Economics of Migrant Ethnicity

A Drive up the Capital Coast? Contributions to Post-reform Growth across Chinese Provinces

We use nonparametric production-frontier methods to decompose the growth of labor productivity of Chinese provinces in the post-reform period. These techniques, combined with kernel density estimates, allow us to decompose the shift in the distribution of labor productivity without the need for many assumptions common in the empirical growth literature. We find that (1) the distribution of output per ...

Ethnic Self-Identification of First-Generation Immigrants

This paper uses the concept of ethnic self-identification of immigrants in a two-dimensional framework. It acknowledges that attachments to both the country of origin and the host country are not necessarily mutually exclusive. There are three possible paths of adjustment from separation at entry, namely the transitions to assimilation, integration, and marginalization. We analyze the determinants ...

Buyer Power and Supplier Incentives

This paper analyzes the origins and welfare consequences of buyer power. We show that if suppliers are capacity constrained or have strictly convex costs, there are two different channels through which large buyers can obtain more favorable terms from their suppliers. In particular, we show how the presence of large buyers can then erode the value of suppliers' outside option. Somewhat surprisingly, ...

The Impact of a Customs Union between Turkey and the EU on Turkey's Exports to the EU

This article investigates Turkey's sectoral trade flows to the EU based on panel data from the period 1988 to 2002. Turkey's 16 most important export sectors are analysed. Emphasis is placed on the role of price competition, EU protection and transport costs in the export trade between Turkey and the EU. The empirical model used is an extended version of the gravity model. This study is also a contribution ...

A Cartel Analysis of the German Labor Institutions and Its Implications for Labor Market Reform

This paper offers a cartel explanation for the stability of German collective bargaining institutions. We show that a dense net of legal safeguards has been woven around the wage-setting cartel. These measures make deviation by cartel insiders less attractive and simultaneously erect entry barriers for alternative unions. As we argue, many recent labor policy measures, which make wages more flexible, ...

What Shapes Attitudes toward Paying Taxes? Evidence from Multicultural European Countries

Objectives. Considerable evidence suggests that enforcement efforts cannot fully explain the high degree of tax compliance. To resolve this puzzle of tax compliance, several researchers have argued that citizens' attitudes toward paying taxes, defined as tax morale, helps to explain the high degree of tax compliance. However, most studies have treated tax morale as a black box, without discussing which ...

British and German Manufacturing Productivity Compared: A New Benchmark for 1935/36 Based on Double Deflated Value Added

We present a new estimate of Anglo-German manufacturing productivity levels for 1935/36. It is based on archival data on German manufacturing and published British census data. We calculate comparative levels of value added, correcting for differences in prices for outputs and inputs. This so-called double deflation procedure provides new insights into productivity comparisons because output- and input ...