Suchergebnisse

This paper assesses the economic implications of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. The basic data on trade in goods and services and investment between the two parties suggest that cost of 'Brexit' could be substantial. Trade between the UK and the EU27 is large and of a similar order of magnitude as transatlantic trade (between the EU and the US). The precise nature of the (hopefully free) trade agreement UK-EU-27 is still being negotiated. But all available studies concur that a significant disruption of trade links will impose economic costs on both sides. However, the EU27 would bear only a disproportionally small share of the total cost - not just because it is about five times larger than the UK in economic terms but also for fundamental reasons such as greater market power of its enterprises. Other studies on different free trade arrangements confirm the general proposition that the smaller party has more to gain from eliminating trade barriers (and to lose from imposing them). This implies that the EU will have the stronger negotiating position. ; Dieser Beitrag analysiert die ökonomischen Auswirkungen des Austritts Großbritanniens aus der Europäischen Union. Die Daten zum Außenhandel und den Investitionen zwischen beiden Partnern legen nahe, dass die Kosten des "Brexit" substanziell sein können. Das Ausmaß des Außenhandels zwischen dem Vereinigten Königreich und der EU27 ist ähnlich hoch wie dasjenige des transatlantischen Handels zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und der EU. Die genaue Gestalt des Freihandelsabkommens zwischen dem Vereinigten Königreich und der EU27 wird noch verhandelt. Alle einschlägigen Studien kommen zu dem Ergebnis, dass eine signifikante Einschränkung von Handelsbeziehungen beiden Seiten ökonomische Kosten aufbürdet. Die EU27 werden jedoch nur einen unverhältnismäßig geringen Teil der gesamten Kosten tragen müssen - nicht nur, weil sie ökonomisch gesehen fünfmal größer sind als Großbritannien, sondern auch aus fundamentalen Gründen wie einer höheren Marktmacht ihrer Unternehmen. Auch Impact-Studien zu anderen Freihandelsabkommen bestätigen die allgemeine Vermutung, dass die kleinere Partei mehr aus der Beseitigung von Handelsbarrieren gewinnt bzw. durch deren Einführung verliert. Dies bedeutet, dass die Europäische Union die stärkere Verhandlungsposition hat.

We build an agent-based model populated by households with heterogenous and time-varying financial conditions in order to study how different inequality shocks affect income dynamics and the effects of different types of fiscal policy responses. We show that inequality shocks generate persistent falls in aggregate income by increasing the fraction of credit-constrained households and by lowering aggregate consumption. Furthermore, we experiment with different types of fiscal policies to counter the effects of inequality-generated recessions, namely deficit-spending direct government consumption and redistributive subsidies financed by different types of taxes. We find that subsidies are in general associated with higher fiscal multipliers than direct government expenditure, as they appear to be better suited to sustain consumption of lower income households after the shock. In addition, we show that the effectiveness of redistributive subsidies increases if they are financed by taxing financial incomes or savings.

Agent based models are proposed as an adequate tool for analysing tax payer decisions and, thereby, the consequences of such decisions as they manifest themselves at the macro level. TAXSIM models the conduct of agents of three types, i.e. employers, employees and the government, in an economy of a single sector. Using this model, we examine the conduct of each individual agent and the impact of their decisions on the size of tax evasion and aggregated tax revenues. The main objective is the analysis of the relations between the government and tax payers, as well as the identification of how this relationship affects tax evasion. In this paper, the operation of several factors affecting the incidence of non-registered employment is studied with the help of an improved version of the TAXSIM agent-based simulation model. We analyse the effects of unemployment experience, the quality of government services and the audit strategy of the tax authority on totally hidden, mixed (hidden and legal) and totally legal payments. We start by a brief overview of the TAXSIM model and introduce the novel components in detail. This is followed by a thorough analysis of a vast series of computational experiments, analysing the behavior of the base model, as well as the effect of the newly introduced components (i.e., unemployment experience, adaptive audit strategy, etc.) and their various parameters. Our computational results suggest that the government can use effective tools to improve tax morale and curb tax evasion. Beyond improving the frequency and precision of tax audits the implementation of an adaptive tax audit strategy, the reduction of the exposure to unemployment or, on the motivation side, the improvement of the quality of government services can also be effective.

Historically, tax compliance has been a highly interdisciplinary avenue of research to which economics, psychology, law, sociology, history, political science, and accountancy have made valuable contributions. It is less well understood, however, whether we can glean useful insights into tax compliance by moving beyond the social sciences. In particular, the literature pays little attention to the relevance of biology. This paper attempts to remedy this shortcoming by examining the potential opportunities and limitations of introducing biological concepts into tax compliance research.

The starting point for the research has been the list of 147 banking crises within the period 1976-2011 prepared by the International Monetary Fund. The countries with crises have been analysed with respect to publicly available World Bank indicators in the periods of three years before the crises. The machine learning methodology for subgroup discovery has been used for the analysis. It enabled identification of five subsets of crises. Two of them have been identified as especially useful for the characterization of EU countries with banking crises in the year 2008. Fast growing credit activity is characteristic for the first subgroup while socioeconomic problems recognized by non-increasing quality of public health are decisive for the second subgroup. Comparative analysis of EU countries included into these subgroups demonstrated statistically significant differences with respect to World Bank good governance indicator values for the period before the crisis. Control of corruption, rule of law, and government effectiveness are the indicators which are statistically different for these sets of countries. The significance of the result is in the segmentation of the corpus of countries with banking crises and the recognition of connections between banking crises, socioeconomic problems, and governance effectiveness in some EU countries.

By inverting Saez (2002)'s model of optimal income taxation, we characterize the redistributive preferences of the Irish government between 1987 and 2005. The (marginal) social welfare function revealed by this approach is consistently comparable over time and show great stability despite profound changes in market incomes and important fiscal reforms over the period. Results are robust to numerous checks regarding data, income concepts and elasticities. A comparison with the UK shows marked differences reflecting the narrow political spectrum in Ireland compared to radical changes in British politics over the past 30 years. Some anomalies in the revealed social welfare function suggests introducing transfers to the working poor.

Household micro-datasets often do not contain information on gross incomes. We present an algorithm which exploits the tax- and contribution rules built into tax-benefit models to convert net income information into gross amounts. Using EUROMOD, a multi-country taxbenefit model covering all fifteen countries of the European Union, net-to-gross conversions can be performed for a large number of countries utilising existing models of relevant fiscal rules. The algorithm takes into account all relevant complexities of tax- and contribution rules and can, thus, produce much more accurate results than statistical models which estimate netto-gross ratios using only a few explanatory variables. Among the features of the algorithm is the ability to distinguish between different individuals in the same household. Even if individuals' incomes are taxed jointly, the algorithm is able to approximate separate net-togross factors for individuals in the same fiscal unit. This is possible since EUROMOD can accurately assign people to appropriate fiscal units. In addition, it is in certain cases possible to produce different net-to-gross ratios for different income components. We undertake a case study to illustrate the importance of deriving separate net-to-gross factors for different individuals within a household/fiscal unit and for different income sources of the same individual.

Residential choice does not only depend on properties of the dwelling, neighborhood amenities and affordability, but is also affected by the population composition within a neighbourhood. All these attributes are capitalised in the house price. Empirically, it is not easy to disentangle the effect of the neighbourhood on house prices from the effects of the dwelling attributes. We implement an agentbased model of an urban housing market that allows us to analyse the interaction between residential choice, population composition in a neighbourhood and house prices. Agents differ in terms of education, income and group affiliation (majority vs. minority). The results show that the "wrong" neighbourhood can lead to an average house price depreciation of up to 13,500 monetary units or 7.1 percent. Whereas rich agents can afford to move to preferred places, roughly 13.01% of poor minorities and 8.02% of poor majority agents are locked in their current neighbourhood. By introducing a policy that provides agents more access to credit, we find that all population groups denote higher satisfaction levels. Poor agents show the largest improvements. The general satisfaction level across all population groups increases. However, the extra credit accessibility also drives up house prices and leads to higher wealth inequality within the city. If agents have a preference for status rather than for similarity, the effect of the overall inequality is smaller, since agents become more satisfied living in areas with less similar agents. ; Die Wahl des Wohnortes hängt nicht nur von den Eigenschaften der Wohneinheit, der Nahversorgung innerhalb der Nachbarschaft oder der Zahlungsfähigkeit ab, sondern wird auch von der Bevölkerungszusammensetzung innerhalb der Nachbarschaft beeinflusst. All diese Attribute werden entsprechend im jeweiligen Hauspreis kapitalisiert. Empirisch gesehen ist es nicht trivial, den Effekt der Nachbarschaft auf die Hauspreise von den Effekten der Wohneigenschaften zu entkoppeln. Aus diesem Grund implementieren wir ein agentenbasiertes Modell eines städtischen Immobilienmarktes, das es uns erlaubt, die Interaktion zwischen der Wohnortswahl, der Bevölkerungszusammensetzung in einer Nachbarschaft und den Hauspreisen zu analysieren. Die Agenten unterscheiden sich in Bezug auf Bildung, Einkommen und Gruppenzugehörigkeit (Mehrheit vs. Minderheit). Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die "falsche" Nachbarschaft zu einer durchschnittlichen Hauspreisabwertung von bis zu 13.500 Geldeinheiten oder 7,1 Prozent führen kann. Während reiche Agenten es sich leisten können, in bevorzugte Gegenden umzuziehen, bleibt die Option des Umzugs aufgrund von fehlender Zahlungsfähigkeit etwa 13,01% der armen Minderheits- und 8,02% der armen Mehrheitsagenten verwehrt. Durch die Einführung einer Politik, die Agenten mehr Zugang zu Krediten bietet, stellen wir fest, dass alle Bevölkerungsgruppen einen höheren Zufriedenheitsgrad erreichen, wobei arme Agenten die größten Verbesserungen aufzeigen. Über alle Bevölkerungsgruppen hinweg steigt das allgemeine Zufriedenheitsniveau. Allerdings bewirkt der zusätzliche Kreditzugang auch eine Erhöhung der Hauspreise und führt infolgedessen zu einer höheren Vermögensungleichheit innerhalb der Stadt. Wenn Agenten eher eine Nachbarschaftspräferenz für Status als für Ähnlichkeit haben, ist der Effekt der allgemeinen Ungleichheit geringer, da Agenten zufriedener werden, wenn sie in Gebieten mit weniger ähnlichen Agenten leben.

Did the Federal Reserve's Quantitative Easing (QE) in the aftermath of the financial crisis have macroeconomic effects? To answer this question, we estimate a large-scale DSGE model over the sample from 1998 until 2020, including data of the Fed's balance sheet. We allow for QE to affect the economy via multiple channels that arise from several financial frictions. Our nonlinear Bayesian likelihood approach fully accounts for the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. We find that QE increased output by about 1.2 percent, reflecting a net increase in investment of nearly 9 percent accompanied by a 0.7 percent drop in aggregate consumption. Both government bond and capital asset purchases effectively improved financing conditions. Especially capital asset purchases significantly facilitated new investment and increased the production capacity. Against the backdrop of a fall in consumption, supply side effects dominated, leading to a disinflationary effect of about 0.25 percent annually.

Did the Federal Reserves' Quantitative Easing (QE) in the aftermath of the financial crisis have macroeconomic effects? To answer this question, the authors estimate a large-scale DSGE model over the sample from 1998 to 2020, including data of the Fed's balance sheet. The authors allow for QE to affect the economy via multiple channels that arise from several financial frictions. Their nonlinear Bayesian likelihood approach fully accounts for the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. They find that between 2009 to 2015, QE increased output by about 1.2 percent. This reflects a net increase in investment of nearly 9 percent, that was accompanied by a 0.7 percent drop in aggregate consumption. Both, government bond and capital asset purchases were effective in improving financing conditions. Especially capital asset purchases significantly facilitated new investment and increased the production capacity. Against the backdrop of a fall in consumption, supply side effects dominated which led to a mild disinflationary effect of about 0.25 percent annually.

The authors build a simple agent-based model populated by households with heterogenous and time-varying financial conditions in order to study how fiscal multipliers can change over the business cycle and are affected by the state of credit markets. They find that deficit-spending fiscal policy dampens the effect of bankruptcy shocks and lowers their persistence. Moreover, the size and dynamics of government spending multipliers are related to the degree and persistence of credit rationing in the economy. On the contrary, in presence of balanced-budget rules, output permanently falls below pre-shock levels and the ensuing multipliers fall below one and are much lower than the ones emerging from the deficit-spending policy. Finally, the authors show that different conditions in the credit market significantly affect the size and the evolution of fiscal multipliers.

This paper provides a micro-funded theory of multilateral resistance to migration analyzing how financial constraints determine migration trends. We build a RUM model in which we explicitly introduce the budget constraint in the migration decision: individuals cannot afford migrating to a destination for which the migration cost (which depends on the immigration policy of the destination country) is higher than their current income. We find that the migration rate between two countries depends on the characteristics of the origin and destination countries and their relative accessibility, and also on a budget constraint term. This term depends on the attributes of alternative destinations. Thus, the model exhibits multilateral resistance to migration. We perform a numerical analysis based on 23 European countries in 2008 and evidence multilateral resistance to migration induced by the implementation of intra-EU migration restrictions following the 2004 EU enlargement.

We build an agent-based model populated by households with heterogenous and time-varying financial conditions in order to study how fiscal multipliers can change over the business cycle and are affected by the state of credit markets. We find that deficit-spending fiscal policy dampens the effect of bankruptcy shocks and lowers their persistence. Moreover, the size and dynamics of government spending multipliers are related to the degree and persistence of credit rationing in the economy. On the contrary, in presence of balanced-budget rules, output permanently falls below pre-shock levels and the ensuing multipliers fall below one and are much lower than the ones emerging from the deficit-spending policy. Finally, we show that different conditions in the credit market significantly affect the size and the evolution of fiscal multipliers.

TTRIOPOL studies the role of domestic bioenergy potentials for agriculture, the wider economy and international trade for Austria. In particular, agricultural biomass pro-duction can contribute to significant shares of energy provision in Austria. A detailed scenario is developed to explore the opportunities and challenges of enhanced domestic biomass production based on short rotation forestry (SRF) for heat supply which is currently among the most competitive technologies. To that end, TRIOPOL establishes a model linkage between a sectoral supply-model for Austrian agriculture and a national small open economy general equilibrium model. Model results show that a biomass premium of 65 € per ton dry matter is required to support 250,000 ha of SRF on cropland in Austria by 2020. The thus provided bioheat covers some 33 petajoule (PJ) heat energy demand in Austria; taking into account the likely rising of energy prices by 2020, this number rises to 47 PJ. Substantial land use changes may also be compensated by increases in land use intensity and as well as changes in imports and exports. Scenario results suggest that domestic food production of non-meat commodities falls by 1.3%. The sector meat products profits from the high competitiveness of Austrian livestock production and responds by a slight increase in net exports. The results of the quantitative analysis shall support the scientific and political debate on securing food and energy supply as well as economic development goals.