You are here: www.volkerink.net /papers.
(limited list due to confidentiality of a (large) number of projects and reports)
Hoogte en totstandkoming benzineprijzen (with co-authors). Study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2009.
An Evaluation of the Needs for State Aid to the Coal Industry post 2010 (with co-authors). Study commissioned by DG TREN, 2008.
A Study on EU Spending (with a large number of co-authors). Study commissioned by DG Budget, 2008.
Evaluatie Wet Voorraadvorming Aardolieproducten 2001 (with co-authors). Study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2007.
Markt en orde in het mbo. Enkele ordeningsvraagstukken in het mbo nader belicht (with co-authors). Study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2007.
Study of regulatory restrictions in the field of pharmacies (with co-authors). Study commissioned by DG Internal Market, 2007.
Evaluatie Elektriciteitswet 1998 en Gaswet (with co-authors). Study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2006.
Study on the development of competition in the European postal sector (with co-authors). Study commissioned by DG Internal Market, 2005.
Productivity in Network Sectors: An Empirical Analysis (with Nick van der Lijn and Arno Meijer). Study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2005.
Marktordeningsbeleid in netwerksectoren maakt een verschil, ESB, 91(4491), 2006 (with Erik Schmieman and Arno Meijer).
How to Measure the Tax Burden on Labour on a Macro Level? (with Jakob de Haan and Jan- Egbert Sturm) in: Peter Birch Sørensen (ed.), Measuring the Tax Burden on Capital and Labour, MIT Press, 2004.
Tax Ratios in Macroeconomics: Do Taxes Really Matter? (With Jan-Egbert Sturm and Jakob de Haan). Empirica, 29, 209-24, 2002. Also available as: Tax ratios in macroeconomics: do taxes really matter? Madrid, European Economy Group, Working Paper No. 7/2001.
A Runoff System Restores the Principle of Minimum Differentiation. (With Marco Haan). European Journal of Political Economy, 17(1), 157-162, 2001.
Tax Ratios: A Critical Survey. (With Jakob de Haan). OECD Tax Policy Studies No. 5, 2001. View abstract.
Fragmented Government Effects on Fiscal Policy: New Evidence. (With Jakob de Haan). Public Choice. 109(3-4), 221-242, 2001. Our dataset is also available.
Also available in German as: Bjørn Volkerink and Jakob de Haan. (2000): Auswirkungen fragmentierter Regierungen auf die Fiskalpolitik: Neue empirische Ergebnisse. Kapitel 2 (pp. 25-42) in: Reinhard Neck, Robert Holzmann und Friedrich Schneider (Hrsg.): Staatschulden am Ende? Ursachen, Wirkungen un Zukunftsperspektiven. Wien: MANZ'sche Verlags- und Universitätsbuchhandlung, 2000.
Horizontal Integration in the Dutch Financial Sector. (With Erik Dietzenbacher and Bert Smid). International Journal of Industrial Organization, 18(8), 1223-1242, 2000.
Budgetary Procedures: Aspects and Changes. New Evidence for some European Countries. (With Jakob de Haan and Wim Moesen). Chapter 11 (pp. 265-299) in: James M. Poterba and Jürgen von Hagen (eds): Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance. Chicago IL.: Chicago University Press, 1999. View abstract.
Tax Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa - A survey of issues for a number of countries Center for Taxation and Public Governance Working Paper No. 2009/1. Download paper.
Long Live OPTA! (With M.P. Schinkel). Meteor Research Memorandum RM03018, 2003.
How to measure the tax burden on labour at the macro-level? CESifo Working Paper 963 (With Jan-Egbert Sturm and Jakob de Haan). (originally 2002, updated version 2003). Download paper.
Fiscal Performance and Political Instability. Mimeo. 2001, updated version 2003. View abstract.
Effective tax rates in macroeconomics: A note. (With Jakob de Haan). Paper presented at the 56th IIPF conference, Sevilla, Spain, August 28-31, 2000. View abstract.
Political and Institutional Determinants of Budget Deficits: A Review and Some New Empirical Evidence for OECD Countries. 1999, Mimeo. View abstract.
Investment in Firm-Specific and General Human Capital. (With Bert Smid). Paper presented at the 1999 EALE conference, Regensburg, Germany, 1999. View abstract.
Political and Institutional Determinants of the Tax Mix: An Empirical Investigation for OECD Countries. (With Jakob de Haan). SOM Research Report 99E05. University of Groningen, Groningen, 1999. (Also presented at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the European Public Choice Society, Göteborg.) View abstract.
Key Sectors of Innovation. (With Erik Dietzenbacher). Presented at the 12th International Conference on Input-Output Techniques, New York, May 1998. View abstract.
Most industrialized countries entered the 1980s with their public finances in disarray. At the time, persistent deficits pushed up public debt-to-GDP ratios. Despite such similarities, deficit spending varies substantially between countries and within countries over time. Recent theoretical and empirical research has considered how differences in political arrangements affecting national policy formation might explain variation in fiscal policies pursued. Using a panel of 22 OECD countries over the 1971-1996 period this paper extends previous literature on the effects of fragmented government on fiscal policy outcomes in various directions. First, we focus on data relating to central government instead of general government as all theories refer to central government. Second, not only do we analyze the effect of size fragmentation of government, we also examine government's position vis-à-vis parliament and government's political fragmentation. We find evidence that more fragmented government (defined in terms of the number of political parties in a coalition or the number of spending ministers) have higher deficits. There is also some evidence that governments that dispose of excess seats in parliament have lower deficits. Right-wing governments appear to have been fiscally more responsible in the seventies. Political fragmentation does not affect government's budget deficit.
JEL classification: H62, D78.
Keywords: Fragmented government, fiscal policy, political economy.
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paper, latest version, November 2000 (fragmen.pdf)
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zipped, contains the Quattro datafile (cgov7096.wk1) and a file with
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In this paper the available theoretical and empirical literature on the determination of budget deficits is discussed. This literature is far from conclusive on what factors are really important in explaining the widespread cross-country and over-time differences. We find that the most convincing explanations for differences in the sign and magnitude of budget deficits are the presence of political instability, the political strength of governments and the strength of the budgetary process. We test several of the theories on a broad sample of OECD countries for the period 1965-1995, the largest period for which a consistent sample can be constructed. We find that none of the factors has a significant impact on the budgetary experience of these countries. There is some effect of the strength of budgetary procedures on fiscal performance, but this effect is not robust.
In various empirical studies so-called tax ratios (tax revenues expressed as a ratio of some aggregate tax base) are employed as approximations for tax burdens. The most difficult problem in calculating tax ratios is the way in which personal income tax revenues are attributed to labour and capital. We argue that the methodology of Mendoza et al. (1994) is seriously flawed in this respect. Using information from national sources, we calculate more accurate tax ratios for eight OECD countries that differ substantially from those of Mendoza et al. (1997) and which are also differently related to various economic variables.
JEL classification: H20, H29.
Keywords: tax ratios, implicit tax rates, average effective tax rates.
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This paper critically reviews the existing literature on tax ratios. These are ratios of aggregate revenue from one or more taxes (e.g. taxes on employed labour, capital income taxes) to some (aggregate) tax base (e.g. total compensation of employees, capital income, etc.). We provide an overview of the tax ratios that have been calculated in the existing literature and the methodologies used to calculate these. Thereafter, we review these methodologies and suggest some refinements. To examine the robustness of the different methodologies, we re-calculate the existing indicators for a large sample of countries and for a long period, and compare the results to those obtained with our suggested methodology. We find that most tax ratios reported in the literature contain methodological flaws. Furthermore, those numbers are not good approximations of actual tax ratios.
JEL classification: H22, H87, H89.
Keywords: tax ratios, implicit tax rates, average effective tax rates.
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Modern tax systems show a mix of direct and indirect taxes. However, it is difficult - if not impossible - to explain actual tax systems on the basis of optimality conditions. Political and institutional factors are sometimes argued to explain the presence of very complex tax structures. We propose various hypotheses that relate the tax structure to some political and institutional explanatory variables. The hypotheses are tested by applying panel data analysis on a large sample of OECD countries for the period 1965 to 1995. We conclude that political and institutional variables do not substantially influence the actual shape of the tax structure. However, unstable regimes have a higher tax burden.
JEL classification: E62, H61, H87
Keywords: political economy, fiscal policy, tax mix, tax ratio
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Will be added.
One way to proxy the outcome of the R&D process is to count the number of patents a firm has generated. However, there are several problems with the use of the number of patents as an indicator of R&D-output (Griliches, 1990). However, the correlation between changes in R&D spending and generated patents is quite high (Pakes and Griliches, 1984). Different uses of patents as indicators of technological progress range from `simple' patent counts (Johnson et al., 1995) to the use of `specific' input-output techniques to measure the interaction between sectors in the innovative process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the techniques that are applied to input-output tables can also be used for the typical analysis of the specific data on patents and innovations. The data used in this study denote make and use of patents or innovations by sector. By applying the techniques developed, it is possible to pinpoint the sectors that are the most important for innovative activities and the sectors that generate the highest number of patents due to interaction with other sectors. Since these specific data are scarce only Canada is investigated empirically.
In this paper, we extend the analysis of Hashimoto (1981), by introducing non-specific or general schooling. Human capital investment is analysed within a two-period framework. In the first period, the employer and the employee not only have to choose the level of investment in human capital and the division of costs and benefits, but also have to decide on the specificity of the training. In the second period, (private) information on the productivity of schooling comes available, whereafter the employee may decide to quit and the employer can dismiss the employee. Also, the consequences of subsidies or taxes by the government are analysed. In this way, we study the solutions suggested in the recent `employability' debate.
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