International Control of Civil Procedure: Who Benefits?

The work of the Hague Conference on Private International Law in the field of civil litigation is considered, focusing particularly on the Service Convention and the Evidence Convention. The international community has benefited from the work of the Hague Conference through cooperation under its auspices

Numerical Multi-Loop Calculations via Finite Integrals and One-Mass EW-QCD Drell-Yan Master Integrals

We study a recently-proposed approach to the numerical evaluation of multi-loop Feynman integrals using available sector decomposition programs. As our main example, we consider the two-loop integrals for the $\alpha \alpha_s$ corrections to Drell-Yan lepton production with up to one massive vector boson in physical kinematics. As a reference, we evaluate these planar and non-planar integrals by the method of differential equations through to weight five. Choosing a basis of finite integrals for the numerical evaluation with SecDec3 leads to tremendous performance improvements and renders the otherwise problematic seven-line topologies numerically accessible. As another example, basis integrals for massless QCD three loop form factors are evaluated with FIESTA4. Here, employing a basis of finite integrals results in an overall speedup of more than an order of magnitude.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, 4 tables, 2 ancillary files with analytical results; in v2: minor improvements in the text with additional references added. v2 is the version published in JHE

A novel approach to integration by parts reduction

Integration by parts reduction is a standard component of most modern multi-loop calculations in quantum field theory. We present a novel strategy constructed to overcome the limitations of currently available reduction programs based on Laporta's algorithm. The key idea is to construct algebraic identities from numerical samples obtained from reductions over finite fields. We expect the method to be highly amenable to parallelization, show a low memory footprint during the reduction step, and allow for significantly better run-times.Comment: 4 pages. Version 2 is the final, published version of this articl

To what Extent are Public Pensions Pareto-improving? On the Interaction of Means Tested Basic Income and Public Pensions

If there is a means tested basic income for old age, households will tend to reduce precautionary savings to an inefficiently low level. This might serve as a justification for a public pension system. In a representative agent framework, indeed, the introduction of a compulsory pension s ystem is shown to be Pareto improving. This analysis is extended to two income types where compulsory savings are found to be Pareto improving only up to a point. Increases in contribution rates beyond that point simply result in increasingly regressive (implicit) taxation, potentially eliminating all redistribution via the means tested basic income. Using these results in a pay-as-you-go framework, we show that an unfunded pensions system (with intragenerational fairness) plays a role similar to compulsor y savings in preventing the savings moral hazard and could have the same adverse effects on redistribution if it is too large. If the population is aging, however, an unfunded system with a constant contribution rate is found to become less effective at pr eventing the savings moral hazard. In this case, the introduction of a funded system of the right size is needed to restore Pareto efficiency.Public pensions, compulsory savings, means tested basic income

How Much Fiscal Equalisation?

We treat fiscal equalisation as an insurance device against regional tax revenue variance. This insurance comes at the price of a moral hazard: regional government will spend too little effort on the development of the local tax base. In a simple bargaining model with two identical regions we show that less than total fiscal equalisation combined with lump sum transfers will be optimal. Taking a step back to the constitutional bargaining behind some veil of ignorance which determines the fallback position for later negotiations, we show that writing total fiscal equalisation into the constitution will be optimal.Fiscal equalisation, constitutional bargaining, moral hazard

Mixing Bismarck and Child Pension Systems:An Optimum Taxation Approach

The labor-leisure distortion of a pay-as-you-go pension system can be reduced through a stronger tax-benefit link or Bismarck pension system. Distortions of the fertility decision can be reduced through the introduction of a stronger child-benefit or child pension system.Within our optimal taxation framework, we find a Corlett-Hague result regarding the optimal mix of the two: if and only if children are more complementary to leisure should the taxbenefit link be given a positive weight at the expense of the child-benefit link. The model also allows us to examine the infertility insurance argument that may justify redistribution from families with children to those without implied by most pension systems. We find that the opposite redistribution, from the childless to those with children, would be efficient if individuals have low risk aversion. Redistribution in favor of the infertile would only be justified when risk aversion is high.pay-as-you-go pension, fertility, externality, Bismarck pension, optimal taxation

Public pensions and intra-EU mobility: an unfinished agenda

Cross-border mobility in the EU remains low. This paper looks at how differences in pension systems distort mobility.The authors distinguish between two ways in which national public pension systems can distort intra-EU movements of workers. First, each national pension system may display an inherent mobility bias. Second, mobility distortions may arise from differences between national pension systems. The conceptual framework presented in this paper can help to cut through the complexity of the issue in order to detect any systematic mobility bias.