Effekte von Fusionen

Seit September 1990 untersucht die Europäische Kommission Zusammenschlüsse großer Unternehmen im Zuge der EG-Fusionskontrollverordnung. Das Entstehen - beziehungsweise das Verstärken - marktbeherrschender Stellungen soll durch diese Kontrolle und die getroffenen Entscheidungen - Genehmigungen, Genehmigungen mit Auflagen und Untersagungen - verhindert werden. In dieser Arbeit werden anhand von Firmenbilanzdaten die Effekte derjenigen Zusammenschlüsse berechnet, die von der Europäischen Kommission genehmigt oder unter Auflagen genehmigt wurden. Ob diese Genehmigungen „richtig“ waren – keine marktmachtfördernde Fusion genehmigt wurde -, soll beantwortet werden, wobei auf firmen- und fusionsimmanente Charakteristika Rücksicht genommen wird. Die durchschnittliche Fusion im verwendeten Datensatz ist nicht profitabel bezüglich Gewinne, jedoch erfolgreich hinsichtlich der Umsatzentwicklung. Betrachtet man Gewinne und Umsätze zusammen entdeckt man, für Genehmigungen mit wie ohne Auflagen, dass profitable Fusionen eher auf Effizienz- als auf Marktmachtsteigerungen zurückzuführen sind. Angesichts der profitablen Fusionen wurde demnach mehrheitlich die richtige Entscheidung von Seiten der Kommission getroffen. Jedoch muss auch beachtet werden, dass in fast jeder untersuchten Untergruppe die größte Anzahl der Fusionen effizienzmindernd ist. Derartige Fusionen zu verhindern ist zwar nicht festgeschriebenes Ziel der Fusionskontrollverordnung, die Auswirkungen dieser Zusammenschlüsse auf die Gesamtwohlfahrt sind jedoch nicht günstig.In September 1990 the European Communities Merger Regulation came into force. Since then the European Commission has scrutinized – and cleared, cleared under commitments or blocked - mergers undertaken by large companies. The regulation’s aim lies in the prevention of market dominating positions. The present work calculates - by means of balance sheet data - the effects of mergers supervised by the Commission. Whether the “right” mergers were cleared and whether there are significant differences in the effects of mergers cleared with and without remedies is brought to light. Within the used database the average merger is not profitable, whereas sales tend to increase. Examining sales and profits together indicates mergers being more likely profitable out of efficiency increases than of gains in market power. This is true for clearances as for decisions under commitments. Hence, concerning profitable mergers a right decision was taken by the European Commission. However, the greater part of mergers is not profitable and results in efficiency decreases. Although it is not the outright aim of the Merger Regulation to prevent such mergers, these are not supporting total welfare

IREA: IHS Microsimulation Model for Retirement Behaviour in Austria ; Final Report ; Funded by the European Commission (DG EMPL-Progress)

from the Table of Contents: Abstract; Executive Summary; Introduction; The Austrian Pension System; Data: Sources and Definitions; IREA: Incentive Measures; IREA: Microsimulation; IREA: Econometric Model; IREA: Simulations; Variable Description; Empirical Incentive Measures; Estimation Results; Grid Search; Hazard Rate Figures; Supplement: Development of Pension Systems in Europe; Supplement: A Country Comparison of Pension Systems

Study on the effects and incidence of labour taxation

In the aftermath of the financial crisis most European countries are continuing to face employment problems. In a number of Member States government intervention has further resulted in increasing debt levels and high tax burdens overall and in particular on labour. Therefore well-targeted tax reforms seem to be in order to improve the labour market outcomes. It is often implicitly assumed that a decrease on the employee side, i.e. in the personal income tax rate or the employee part of social security contribution, leads to a higher labour supply. Against this background four main goals of this study emerge. First, is to identify from the literature which labour market imperfections result in employment problems and to attribute them to the labour supply or on the labour demand side. Given the heterogeneity in the labour market situation of different groups, we also set out to identify which socioeconomic groups are most vulnerable to employment problems. The next step is to review the literature which assesses the short-run and long-run economic incidence of labour taxation. To further break down the incidence into its underlying determinants we also review the literature on the (tax) elasticities of labour supply and labour demand. Then the literature on the influence of the economic environment on the tax incidence outcome, most notably the wage setting mechanisms and the institutional background, is reviewed. Finally the findings of the literature review are brought together in a framework of indicators to identify the potential of tax reforms to reduce tax related employment problems

Labour supply in Austria: an assessment of recent developments and the effects of a tax reform

We apply a structural discrete choice framework to estimate income-specific own-wage and cross-wage labour supply elasticities in regard to working hours and participation for married and single males and females in Austria. We use data from the Austrian components of the European Statistics of Income and Living Conditions from 2004 to 2012. Own-wage elasticities are very small for males and slightly higher for females. Cross-wage elasticities are practically zero for males and slightly negative for females. Male and female own-wage elasticities decrease with higher incomes. Over time female labour supply elasticities decrease. Furthermore, we assess the labour supply and fiscal effects of the Austrian tax reform of 2016. We find a total increase in working hours by 0.71%. The labour supply effects are stronger on the intensive margin, for females and for low-income earners. On total the tax reform induces a tax relief of 4.7 billion Euros. The positive effects on tax burden and disposable income increase with the individual income. (author's abstract

Tax incentives and family labor supply in Austria

The family policy reform 2009 introduced tax deductibles for children and child care expenditures in Austria. In this paper we evaluate this reform based on a structural labor supply model with unitary households which has been estimated on the European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions cross-sections 2004–2008. We find that the reform had only small employment effects, most of them being generated through the introduction of a child care deductible. However, to illustrate the employment potential of a shift from universal child transfers to tax deductibles we propose additional simulations showing that such a policy shift would yield an increase in full time equivalents of approximately .70 % of overall employment, with married females increasing their labor supply by up to 1.5 %. While the proposed policy shifts have regressive effects in terms of their distributional impact, we show that phasing-out the tax deductible at higher income allows for the compensation of lower-income households without jeopardizing positive employment effects