Documents Schwarz, Peter 2 results

"This paper analyses whether favourable taxation of married couples distorts women's employment decisions. In contrast to previous research concentrating on experiences in a single country, this paper investigates cross-country differences in female labour force participation. The paper shows that, for a panel of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries during the period 1979–2002, distortions with respect to the taxation of single and married persons can account partly for differences in female labour market participation across countries. However, we find also strong evidence that unfavourable market conditions due to high unemployment as well as few income opportunities have a deterring effect on female labour force participation, indicating that the decision to work is also driven by market forces. With respect to different countries the results suggest that especially in Ireland and the UK tax distortions have played a crucial role in distorting incentives to work."

"This article reviews the social science literature on tax competition in three steps. The first step is to look at the baseline model of tax competition on which most of the literature implicitly or explicitly builds. The key feature is that governments in a context of open borders will engage in wasteful competition for mobile economic assets and activities through tax reductions. The second step is to focus more closely on tax-induced cross-border mobility. Do tax payers actually shift assets and activities across borders in response to differences in taxation? The main message of the literature is that the scope for tax arbitrage depends crucially on the legal rules governing the taxation of cross-border activities and that the intensity of tax arbitrage varies greatly across different taxes. The final step is to analyze government reactions to tax arbitrage. Do they engage in competitive tax cutting as predicted by the baseline model? The literature discusses various strategies of tax competition and demonstrates that different governments use them to different degrees across different taxes. It also shows, however, that governments increasingly engage in tax cooperation to reign in tax arbitrage and competition. While off to a slow start in the 1960s, tax cooperation has gained momentum in recent years, especially after the financial crisis in 2008. "