Benassy-Quéré, A. & Wolff, G. (2014) “Tax harmonisation in Europe: Moving forward“, VoxEU Organisation, 22 July.   Tax harmonisation has been controversial since the establishment of the European Economic Community, and corporation tax proposals are currently on the table in the EU. Although tax competition can be beneficial, tax harmonisation could curb tax competition that leads to the under-provision of public goods or to burden-shifting from mobile to immobile tax …Read More

Carrera, S. & Guild, E. (2014) “The European Council’s Guidelines for the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice 2020: Subverting the ‘Lisbonisation’ of Justice and Home Affairs?“, Justice and Home Affairs, CEPS Essays, 14 July.   In its Conclusions of 26-27 June 2014, the European Council has adopted the new “Strategic Guidelines for Legislative and Operational Planning for the coming years within the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice …Read More

Algan, Y., Cahuc, P. & Sangnier, M. (2014) “Trust and the welfare state: The twin-peaked curve“, VoxEU Organisation, 17 July.   It is commonly argued that the persistence of large welfare states in Scandinavian countries is due to the trustworthiness of their citizens. This column shows that the relationship between trust and the size of the welfare state is twin peaked. Untrustworthy individuals support generous welfare states because they expect …Read More

Mody, A. (2014) “Did the German court do Europe a favour?“, Bruegel Working Paper 2014/09, 15 July.   The European Central Bank’s Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme was a politically-pragmatic tool to diffuse the euro-area crisis. But it did not deal with the fundamental incompleteness of the European monetary union. As such, it blurred the boundary between monetary and fiscal policy. The fuzziness of this boundary helped in the short-term …Read More