fdi and taxation a meta study despite the continuing political interest in the usefulness of tax competition and tax coordination as well as the wealth of theoretical analyses it still remains open whether or when tax competition is harmful moreover the influence of tax differentials on multinationals decisions is still insufficiently analyzed thus economists have increasingly resorted to empirical analysis in order to gain insights on the elasticity of fdi with respect to company taxation as a result the empirical literature on taxation and international capital flows has grown to a similar abundance during the last 25 years as the respective theoretical literature its heterogeneity leads to a rising need for concise reviews on the existing empirical evidence in this paper we extend former meta analyses on fdi and taxation in three ways first we add the most recent publications unconsidered in meta analyses up to date second we apply a different methodology by using a broad set of meta regression estimators and explicitly discuss which one is most suitable for application to our meta data third we address some important issues in research on fdi and taxation to the clarification of which meta analysis can make valuable contributions these issues are mainly the influence of variables which might moderate effects of tax differentials e g public spending the implications of using aggregate fdi data as opposed to firm level information on measured tax effects the implications of bilateral effective tax rates and the possible presence of publication bias in primary research

sharing the burden for climate change mitigation in the canadian federation dividing the burden for greenhouse gas abatement amongst the provinces has proven challenging in canada and is a major factor contributing to canada s poor historic performance on greenhouse gas abatement as the country aims to achieve substantial cuts to emissions over the next decade and by mid century such burden sharing considerations are likely to be elevated in importance this paper uses a calibrated multi region multi sector computable general equilibrium model to compare a number of archetypal rules for sharing the burden of a joint commitment amongst members for the case of greenhouse gas reductions in canada because of the substantial heterogeneity amongst canadian provinces these different burden sharing rules imply signifcantly different relative abatement effort amongst provinces and also signifcantly different welfare implications when emission permits are allocated on an equal per capita basis welfare is increased in ontario british columbia quebec and manitoba and signifcantly reduced in alberta and saskatchewan in contrast when emission permits are allocated based on historic emissions alberta and saskatchewan are made better off and ontario british columbia quebec and manitoba are made worse off we compare these archetypal burden sharing rules to existing provincial emission reduction commitments and find that none of the standard burden sharing rules comes close to existing commitments we argue that the debate on burden sharing of greenhouse gas abatement in canada could be objectified if informed by coherent quantitative analysis such as the one presented here

distributional effects of a carbon tax on car fuels in france this paper analyses the distributional effects of alternative scenarios of carbon taxes on car fuels using disaggregated french panel data from 2003 to 2006 it incorporates household price responsiveness that differs across income groups into a consumer surplus measure of tax burden carbon taxation is regressive before revenue recycling however taking into account the benefits from congestion reduction induced by the tax mitigates regressivity we show also that recycling additional revenues from the carbon tax either in equal amounts to each household or according to household size makes poorest households better off

social and political responses to ecological tax reform in europe an introduction to the special issue this paper introduces the special issue on the policies for ecological tax reform assessment of social responses petras project about responses to ecological tax reform etr in europe although etr is widely accepted to be a policy with desirable effects its implementation has been limited by problems of political acceptability the project aimed to address the question of how to make such a policy more acceptable it is the first study to examine in depth the thinking of members of the general public about the etr policies and is also the first international comparative study of the thinking of ordinary business people about etr policies the petras project methodology was based around the use of interviews and focus groups to inform the assessment of social responses to etr policies and the development of improved designs for them a number of issues emerged relating to awareness trust understanding of the purpose visibility incentives regressivity levels of taxation terminology communication about etr and the use of alternative instruments together with these similarities a pattern of differences between the countries can also be seen the final section of this paper introduces the national studies described in the following papers

the last word on the wage curve abstract since 1990 there has been extensive international research on the responsiveness of wages of individuals to changing local labour market conditions for many countries an inverse relationship between wages and local unemployment rates has been found in their book the wage curve blanchflower and oswald argued that the unemployment elasticity of pay is around 0 1 in most countries in a 1995 literature survey card referred to this striking empirical regularity as being close to an empirical law of economics nonetheless reported elasticities do vary even excluding outliers between about 0 5 and 0 1 there is also considerable heterogeneity among wage curve studies in terms of data and model specification this paper carries out meta analytic techniques on a sample of 208 elasticities derived from the literature to uncover the reasons for the differences in empirical results across studies several causes of variation are identified there is also clear evidence of downward publication bias in addition many reported t statistics are biased upwards due to the use of aggregate unemployment rates a maximum likelihood method and a trimming procedure are used to correct for these biases both methods give similar results for our sample an unbiased estimate of the wage curve elasticity at the means of study characteristics is about 0 07

public acceptance for environmental taxes self interest environmental and distributional concerns abstract while strongly recommended by economists it has often been politically difficult to impose taxes on externalities there is a substantial literature on public attitudes towards environmental taxes there has however been few comprehensive attempts to understand attitudes towards environmental taxes the main research question in this paper is which factors influence support for fuel taxation we propose a model of attitudes towards fuel taxation and test this model as well as more specific hypotheses using data from a representative survey of the adult norwegian population our results suggest that support for fuel taxation is best predicted by beliefs about environmental consequences followed by beliefs about consequences to others beliefs about consequences to self self interest is the factor that explains the least variation in support for fuel taxation the academically interesting result that support cannot be well explained without capturing a broad range of motivational factors is also highly policy relevant it implies that there is no magic formula for increasing public support for environmental taxes there are however some issues which can be addressed trust in how well the government spends the revenue and the perception that taxation does very little to change behaviour and thus to reduce environmental problems

a meta analysis of the international gender wage gap abstract since the early 1970s a number of authors have calculated gender wage differentials between women and men of equal productivity this meta study provides a new quantitative review of this vast amount of empirical literature on gender wage differentials as it concerns not only differences in methodology data and time periods but also different countries we place particular emphasis on a proper consideration of the quality of the underlying study which is done by a weighting with quality indicators the results show that data restrictions i e the limitation of the analysis to new entrants never marrieds or one narrow occupation only have the biggest impact on the resulting gender wage gap moreover we are able to show what effect a misspecification of the underlying wage equation like the frequent use of potential experience has on the calculated gender wage gap over time raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen substantially however most of this decrease is due to better labor market endowments of females

eu climate policy up to 2020 an economic impact assessment in its fight against climate change the eu is committed to reducing its overall greenhouse gas emissions to at least 20 below 1990 levels by 2020 to meet this commitment the eu builds on segmented market regulation with an eu wide cap and trade system for emissions from energy intensive installations ets sectors and additional measures by each eu member state covering emission sources outside the cap and trade system the non ets sector furthermore the eu has launched additional policy measures such as renewable energy subsidies in order to promote compliance with the climate policy target basic economic reasoning suggests that emission market segmentation and overlapping regulation can create substantial excess costs if we focus only on the climate policy target in this paper we evaluate the economic impacts of eu climate policy based on numerical simulations with a computable general equilibrium model of international trade and energy use our results highlight the importance of initial market distortions and imperfections as well as alternative baseline projections for the appropriate assessment of eu compliance cost

successful in the long run a meta regression analysis of persistent firm profits we study the profit persistence literature by applying meta regression analysis mra to a set of 36 empirical papers which analyze the persistence of abnormal firm profits over time the analyzed literature provides evidence for a mediocre degree of persistence in abnormal profits an initial analysis of the distribution of reported profit persistence estimates reveals some degree of excess variation this points toward publication bias that favors significant results independent of their algebraic sign the mra however reveals that publication bias is particularly favoring results that indicate profit persistence and thus contradict the neoclassical model of perfect competition moreover the mra enables to control for heterogeneity driven by the study design we find that the analyzed country developing vs developed the applied econometric approach as well as the analyzed period of time are significant drivers of heterogeneity in reported persistence estimates

co2 taxes equity and the double dividend macroeconomic model simulations for austria abstract this paper investigates the impacts of co2 tax schemes on co2 emissions equity and macroeconomic indicators in austria with the macroeconomic model dynk aut our scenarios focus on non ets co2 emissions and comprise different tax rates and revenue recycling options lower labor taxes lower vat and lump sum payments the short term comparative scenario analysis indicates that co2 taxes without recycling lead to significant co2 emission reductions at moderate economic costs equity impacts on households depend on the indicator used but can be regressive without recycling most recycling schemes can achieve a double dividend i e emission reductions and increases in gdp lump sum payments are less efficient than reducing the vat or labor taxes equity impacts are progressive with lump sum payments rather proportional with lower vat and regressive with lower labor taxes a combination of recycling schemes and or a restriction of lump sum payments to lower income households can minimize the trade off between equity and efficiency our simulations suggest that well designed co2 tax schemes could be a crucial and socially acceptable element within a comprehensive policy package to achieve ghg emission targets for non ets sectors in austria

a meta analysis of the union nonunion wage gap the authors use meta regression analysis a new method for synthesizing empirical results reported in the economic literature to corroborate and extend h gregg lewis s landmark 1986 research on t

meta regression analysis a quantitative method of literature surveys abstract pedagogically literature reviews are instrumental they summarize the large literature written on a particular topic give coherence to the complex often disparate views expressed about an issue and serve as a springboard for new ideas however literature surveys rarely establish anything approximating unanimous consensus ironically this is just as true for the empirical economic literature to harmonize this dissonance we offer a quantitative methodology for reviewing the empirical economic literature meta regression analysis mra is the regression analysis of regression analyses mra tends to objectify the review process it studies the processes that produce empirical economic results as though they were any other social scientific phenomenon mra provides a framework for replication and offers a sensitivity analysis for model specification in this brief essay we propose a new method of reviewing economic literature mra and discuss its potential

the role of asset specificity in the vertical integration decision abstract according to the logic of transaction cost economics several factors determine the most efficient form of economic organization these factors include uncertainty and frequency of transactions involving the transfer of goods or services although the most important factor is asset specificity these characteristics of transactions engender high transaction costs but they also parallel the conditions under which the sunk cost effect is most likely to be observed the potential influence of sunk cost considerations in the choice of corporate governance structure is illustrated with respect to vertical integration and was tested in a laboratory study in which subjects were asked to play the role of a firm s chief strategist the results support the view that asset specificity drives vertical integration but for reasons that may have little to do with transaction cost economizing

distributional impacts of carbon pricing a general equilibrium approach with micro data for households article i nfo many policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions have at their core efforts to put a price on carbon emissions carbon pricing impacts households both by raising the cost of carbon intensive products and by changing factor prices a complete analysis requires taking both effects into account the impact of carbon pricing is determined by heterogeneity in household spending patterns across income groups as well as heterogeneity in factor income patterns across income groups it is also affected by precise formulation of the policy how is the revenue from carbon pricing distributed as well as the treatment of other government policies e g the treatment of transfer payments what is often neglected in analyses of policy is the heterogeneity of impacts across households even within income or regional groups in this paper we incorporate 15 588 households from the u s consumer and expenditure survey data as individual agents in a comparative static general equilibrium framework these households are represented within the mit usrep model a detailed general equilibrium model of the u s economy in particular we categorize households by full household income factor income as well as transfer income and apply various measures of lifetime income to distinguish households that are temporarily low income e g retired households drawing down their financial assets from permanently low income households we also provide detailed within group distributional measures of burden impacts from various policy scenarios

use renewables to be cleaner meta analysis of the renewable energy consumption economic growth nexus abstract the renewable energy consumption economic growth nexus is a growing area of research over the last few years emanating to mixed results the aim of the current study is to quantitatively synthesise the empirical literature on the subject using the meta analysis approach in particular a meta multinomial regression is employed to investigate the sources of variation in the direction of causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth this causal relationship takes the form of four hypotheses namely the feedback conservation growth and neutrality hypotheses to the best of author s knowledge this study constitutes the first meta analysis undertaken on the renewable energy consumption economic growth nexus the empirical results reveal that the variation in the supported hypotheses is due to a number of characteristics including model specification data characteristics estimation techniques cointegration methods and causality tests and development level of the country on which a study was conducted

public acceptability of personal carbon trading and carbon tax abstract climate change is one of the greatest challenges confronting the international community requiring action to achieve deep cuts in carbon emissions the implementation of potentially uncomfortable but necessary policy measures is though critically dependent upon public acceptability this paper reports a novel application of stated preference techniques to explore the influence of key design attributes on the acceptability of a personal carbon trading scheme in isolation and when compared to a carbon tax illustrative forecasts from the models developed indicate the importance of design attributes especially the basis of the initial permit allocation for personal carbon trading and the use to which revenues are put for carbon tax results indicate that the best scheme designs could be acceptable to a majority of respondents

history and social responses to environmental tax reform in the united kingdom abstract this paper gives a short history of fuel taxation and the climate change levy in the uk the research described was based around the use of interviews and focus groups to inform the assessment of social responses to etr policies and the development of improved designs for them interviews were conducted with selected policy makers and companies focus groups were conducted with quota samples of the general public the research shows that the problem that etr faces in terms of public acceptance is not so much outright hostility to environmental taxation as conceptual problems with the design similar conceptual problems were also found in the interviews with business people these can be summarised as lack of trust about use of the revenues difficulty in understanding the purpose of a tax shift and a desire for incentives for good behaviour as well as perceived penalties for bad behaviour

a rural myth sources and implications of the perceived unfairness of carbon taxes in rural communities abstract since british columbia s carbon tax was implemented in 2008 local interest groups and municipal politicians have claimed that the tax places an unfair burden on rural communities we investigate the sources of this perception of unfairness and its implications for policymaking we examine the distributive effects of british columbia s carbon tax using a computable general equilibrium model of the canadian economy we find that the rural population would indeed have experienced a disproportionate burden had the carbon tax been introduced without redistributive measures but that the revenue recycling program introduced in parallel with the tax was sufficient to balance the inequity hence the northern and rural homeowner benefit program a transfer program introduced later in response to public protests was unnecessary additionally analysis of polling data shows that the new program failed to increase support for the carbon tax in rural communities despite making these households better off on average than households in large urban centers we therefore conclude that this ongoing opposition is based on a rural myth policymakers should carefully investigate distributive impacts of carbon policies and address evidential inequities yet before overcompensating groups that still feel disadvantaged policymakers should address the myth of unfairness at its source

can carbon taxes be progressive abstract most studies have assessed the distributional impact of carbon taxes through their effects on commodity prices alone while ignoring their impact on individual welfare brought about by changes in factor prices yet the remunerations of capital and labor are not affected by these taxes similarly and their shares in earned incomes are not uniform across households this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the incidence of carbon taxes on inequality by considering simultaneously the commodity and the income channels we propose a decomposition of the change in individual welfare metrics then we develop a general equilibrium model to assess the impact of carbon taxes on factor and commodity prices and subsequently their distributional impact on households using the lorenz and concentration curves and the gini index our results suggest that changes in factor prices and changes in commodity prices especially those of energy commodities have opposing effects on inequality carbon taxes tend to reduce inequality through the changes in factor prices and tend to increase inequality through the changes in commodity prices hence we find a non monotonic u shaped relationship between carbon taxes and inequality our results suggest that the traditional approach of assessing the impact of carbon taxes on inequality through changes in commodity prices alone may be misleading the findings cast light on the desirability of using both channels in the assessment of carbon taxes on inequality

meta analysis of empirical evidence on energy poverty the case of developing economies abstract energy poverty has evolved as an important issue of research from academic and policy perspectives during the last two decades the energy poverty estimates exhibit widespread variations across regions methodologies and datasets making the task of energy and development policies challenging the variations in energy poverty estimates necessitate a systematic and rigorous analysis of these empirical studies to obtain a true measure of energy poverty the present study conducts a meta analysis of 30 studies and 103 estimates of energy poverty on average 71 1 percent of the population in the overall sample studies has been identified as energy poor high i square statistic values suggest heterogeneity bias in the sample studies therefore analysis at the subgroup level has been conducted meta regression analysis of overall sample and subgroups has identified type of methodology citations impact factor of the journal regional dummies average key crude oil price and gross domestic product as significant factors that explain heterogeneity in the energy poverty effect sizes we recommend inclusion of local and regional factors in assessment of energy poverty for developing a uniform methodology to assess energy poverty across developing economies

replication in empirical economics the journal of money credit and banking project this paper examines the role of replication in empirical economic research it presents the findings of a two year study that collected programs and data from authors and attempted to replicate their published results the research provides new and important information about the extent and causes of failures to replicate published results in economics the findings suggest that inadvertent errors in published empirical articles are a commonplace rather than a rare occurence copyright 1986 by american economic association

time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis author s david card and alan b krueger reviewed work s source the american economic review vol 85 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundredth and seventh annual meeting of the american economic association washington dc january 6 8 1995 may 1995 pp 238 243 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2117925 accessed 04 11 2011 15 46

the effects of exchange rate variability on international trade a meta regression analysis the trade effects of exchange rate variability have been an issue in international economics for the past 30 years the contribution of this article is to apply meta regression analysis mra to the empirical literature on average exchange rate variability exerts a negative effect on international trade yet mra confirms the view that this result is highly conditional by identifying factors that help to explain why estimated trade effects vary from significantly negative to significantly positive mra evidence on the pronounced heterogeneity of the empirical findings may be instructive for policy first by establishing that average trade effects are not sufficiently robust to generalize across countries and second by suggesting the importance of hedging opportunities hence of financial development for trade promotion for the practice of mra we make a case for checking the robustness of results with respect to estimation technique model specification and sample

on the sources of heterogeneity in banking efficiency literature one learns two main lessons from studying the great quantity of banking efficiency literature these lessons regard the heterogeneity in results and the absence of a comprehensive review aimed at understanding the reasons for this variability surprisingly although this issue is well known it has not been systematically analyzed before in order to fill this gap we perform a meta regression analysis mra by examining 1 661 efficiency scores retrieved from 120 papers published over the period 2000 2014 the meta regression is estimated by using the random effects multilevel model reml because it controls for within study and between study heterogeneity the analysis yields four main results firstly parametric methods yield lower levels of banking efficiency than nonparametric studies this holds true even after controlling for the approach used in selecting the inputs and outputs of the frontier secondly we show that banking efficiency is highest when using the value added approach followed by estimates from studies based on the intermediation method whereas those based on the hybrid approach are the lowest thirdly efficiency scores also depend on the quality of studies and on the number of observations and variables used in the primary papers as far as the effects of sample size dimension and quality of papers are concerned there are significant differences in sign and magnitude between parametric and nonparametric studies finally cost efficiency is found to be higher than profit and production efficiency interestingly mra results are robust to the potential outliers in efficiency and sample size distributions