An Analysis of Institutional Change in the European Union with an Application to Social Policy

Institutional change is guided by rules. In the European Union these rules are given by Art. 250- 252 of the Treaty of Amsterdam. These articles define the actors and rules that bring about changes in policies in the European Union. We analyze these articles as games in extensive form and characterize and compare the equilibria of these games. This analysis identifies the decisive actors the conditions under which it comes to institutional change within the European Union. In addition we analyze the tendencies for centralization inherent in these decision procedures as well as their ability to come up with solutions that are a good compromise between all actors.endogenous institutional change, law and economics

Contests with Size Effects.

In this paper we analyze the structure of contest equilibria with a variable number of agents. First we analyze a situation where the total prize depends on the number of agents and where every single agent faces opportunity costs of investing in the contest. Second we analyze a situation where the agents face a trade-off between productive and appropriative investments. Here, the number of agents may also influence the productivity of productive investments. It turns out that both tyes of contests may lead to opposing results concerning the optimal numnber of contestants depending on the strength of size effects. Whereas in the former case individual utility is J-shaped when the number of agents increases, the opposite holds true for the latter case. We discuss the implications of our findings for the case of competition on markets and for the case fo unstable property rights.

The State’s Enforcement Monopoly and the Private Protection of Property

The modern state has monopolized the legitimate use of force. This concept is twofold. First, the state is empowered with enforcement rights; second, the rights of the individuals are (partly) restricted. In a simple model of property rights with appropriation and defense activity, we show that a restriction of private enforcement is beneficial for the property owner, even if there are no economies of scale from public protection. We emphasize the role of the state as a commitment device for a certain level of enforcement. However, commitment will only work if the state can regulate private protection. A ban of private enforcement measures can even be beneficial in situations where there would be no private enforcement at first place because the “shadow” of defense has a negative impact on the investments in property rights infringements. From a legal perspective, our approach emphasizes a regulation of victim behavior as opposed to the standard approach which focuses on the regulation of criminal behavior.Contests, Property Rights, Enforcement, Private Protection, Law

Group Contests with Complementarities in Efforts

Usually, groups increase their productivity by the specialization of their group members. In these cases, group output is no longer simply a sum of individual outputs. We analyze contests with group-specific public goods that allow for different degrees of complementarity between group members’ efforts. More specifically, we use a Tullock contest success function and a CES-impact function. We show that in equilibrium the degree of complementarity is irrelevant if groups do not differ in size and group members have an identical valuation of the public good. The equilibrium is discontinuous as the CES function converges to the Cobb-Douglas case. Except for the effects at the discontinuity, higher complementarity tends to favor larger groups. In groups with diverse valuations, higher complementarity also leads to higher similarity in group members’ efforts, which however is not necessarily an advantage for a more diverse group.contests, public goods

The Taxation of Financial Capital under Asymmetric Information and the Tax-Competition Paradox

This paper examines information sharing between governments in an optimaltaxation framework. We present a taxonomy of alternative systems of international capital-income taxation and characterize the choice of tax rates and information exchange. The model reproduces the conclusion of the previous literature that integration of international capital markets may lead to the under-provision of publicly provided goods. However, different to the existing literature under-provision occurs because of inefficiently coordinated expectations. We show that there exists a second equilibrium with an efficient level of public-good provision and complete and voluntary information exchange between national tax authorities.tax competition, information exchange

The Taxation of Financial Capital under Asymmetric Information and the Tax-Competition Paradox

This paper examines information sharing between governments in an optimal taxation framework. We present a taxonomy of alternative systems of international capital income taxation and characterize the choice of tax rates and information exchange. The model reproduces the conclusion of the previous literature that integration of international capital markets may lead to the under-provision of publicly provided goods. However, contrary to the existing literature under-provision occurs because of inefficiently coordinated expectations. We show that there exists a second equilibrium with an efficient level of public good provision and complete and voluntary information exchange between national tax authorities.tax competition, information exchange

Tax Competition with Formula Apportionment: The Interaction between Tax Base and Sharing Mechanism

The EU Commission is advocating a common consolidated tax base for the corporate income tax, accompanied by a revenue sharing mechanism based on formula apportionment. We analyse tax competition in such a regime, focussing on the interaction between the definition of the tax base and the apportionment method. Tax competition leads to suboptimally low tax rates if and only if the investment elasticity of the tax base is lower than the investment elasticity of the apportionment factor. For any apportionment method a change in the definition of the tax base can turn a race-to-the-bottom in tax competition into a race-over-the-top.tax competition, formular apportionment, corporate income tax

A Theory of User-Fee Competition

We develop a two-region model where the decentralized provision of spillover goods can be financed by means of taxes or user fees. In order to enforce the fees regions have to invest in exclusion. We show that a decentralized solution tends to be inefficient. There will be over-investment in exclusion and an underprovision of the spillover goods compared to a centralized solution. In addition the regions have strategic incentives to set user charges. If the regional spillover goods are substitutes user fees tend to be inefficiently low, whereas they tend to be inefficiently high if the spillover goods are complements.public goods, club goods, user fees, fiscal federalism

Intra-Generational Externalities and Inter-Generational Transfers

In an environment with asymmetric information the implementation of a first-best efficient Clarke-Groves-Vickrey (D’Aspremont-Gérard-Varet) mechanism may not be feasible if it has to be self-financing. By using intergenerational transfers, the arising budget deficit can generally be covered in every generation if the growth rate of the economy is positive. This result yields an alternative explanation for the existence of pay-as-you-go financed transfer mechanisms.pay-as-you-go, externalities, mechanism design, adverse selection

Residence-based Capital Taxation: Why Information is Voluntarily Exchanged and why it is not

The issue of capital tax competition in source-based capital taxes is viewed to be unproblematic if residence-based capital taxation exists. The sustainability, however, of residence-based capital taxation depends on the co-operation of source countries to assist in collecting tax revenues that benefit the residence country. We analyze conditions under which information about foreign savings are voluntarily exchanged. It turns out that information is voulntarily exchanged if the wage structure of the economy is not influenced by the size of the financial sector resulting in an efficient allocation with decentralized tax policies. In contrast, strategic incentives to withhold information may exist if the size of the financial sector has a positive impact on the wage structure of an economy.Tax competition, information exchange