Egger, Peter, Prof. Dr.

Income inequality is blamed for being the main driver of violent crime by the majority of the literature. However, earlier work on the topic largely neglects the role of poverty and income levels as opposed to income inequality. The current paper uses all court verdicts for homicide cases in China between 2014 and 2016, as well as various inequality measures calculated from 2005 mini census data together with a host of control variables to shed light on the relationship at the detailed Chinese prefecture-level. The results suggest that it is the poverty and low income level, rather than income inequality, that is positively related to homicide rates. We show that the internal rural-urban migration from more violent localities contributes to the destination cities’ homicide rates. The poverty-homicide association implies that instead of “relative deprivation”, “absolute deprivation” is mainly responsible for violent crime. Poverty is the mother of crime. —Marcus Aurelius (121-180AD), Emperor of the Roman Empire.

Existing literature has examined factors underlying the formation of goods trade agreements (GTA) and bilateral investment treaties but not the determinants of services trade agreement (STA) membership. This paper bridges the gap by studying the economic and political determinants of STA membership. Its main contribution lies in providing an economic explanation of unilateral services regulatory provisions, embodied in the World Bank's Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (Borchert et al. in World Bank Econ Rev 28:162-188, 2014), and their interaction with services preferentialism. The authors find that unilateral services provisions are closely associated with economic determinants. They also find that countries' participation in STAs is correlated with the similarity of their unilateral services trade restrictiveness, a finding not observed for "goods-only" trade agreements. While geographical and cultural determinants are found to be broadly similar for GTAs and STAs, association with economic size of partners, factor endowments and services cost shares in GDP comes through more strongly for goods-only agreements.

We examine the effects of globalization on the size and composition of tax revenues, worker-specific tax burdens, and effective average labor income tax rates using a unique international database on income tax calculators. We find that due to the increasing mobility of firms and high-income workers, globalization led governments in OECD countries to seek tax revenues from alternative sources, specifically from employee-borne taxes paid by relatively less mobile middleincome workers. In 1994–2007, these workers experienced a globalization-induced rise in their personal income tax rate of around 1.5 percentage points, whereas the top 1% of workers faced a reduction of approximately 1.5 percentage points.

Recent work on labour market effects of globalization has generated both academic and populist interests. However, this work has focussed exclusively on the manufacturing sector. Moreover, general equilibrium effects of globalization have received little attention. This study contributes to filling both these gaps by examining the general equilibrium effects of external exposure on the labor market in Switzerland. We exploit exogenous exchange rate movements to identify trade-induced shocks across all sectors of the Swiss economy and transpose industry-level exposure to the municipal level, using detailed employment data on the entirety of Swiss firms. We find strong evidence for three channels of employment effects of currency appreciation - negative employment growth induced by increasing export uncompetitiveness and higher import competition, and positive employment growth induced by cheaper availability of foreign inputs. The combined average effect of the three channels on employment growth is negative in our preferred results, with significant heterogeneity across municipalities.

Switzerland is a prime location for both domestically owned as well as foreign‐owned multinational enterprises (MNEs). In this paper, we review the literature on MNE activity with respect to its main fundamental (non‐policy) drivers, the non‐fiscal consequences of MNEs for various economic aggregates, and the fiscal implications associated with the operation of foreign affiliate networks. In particular, the paper puts emphasis on the fiscal implications of hosting MNEs and their relation to the current tax environment in Switzerland.

This paper studies the effect of sharing a common native language on inter- national trade. Switzerland hosts three major native language groups which adjoin countries sharing the same native majority languages. In regions close to the internal language border the alternate major language is taught early on in school and not only understood but spoken by the residents. This setting allows for an assessment of the impact of common native rather than spoken language on transaction-level imports from neighbouring countries. Our findings point to an effect of common native language on extensive rather than on intensive margins of trade.

We develop a general equilibrium model of trade with multiple countries and industries in the spirit of Eaton and Kortum (2002) and Bernard, Eaton, Jensen, and Kortum (2003). We structurally estimate the parameters of the model and calibrate it to data on 33 OECD countries and one country that covers the rest of the world. Industries differ by their relative energy intensity and the level of pollution. Accordingly, the implementation of policy instruments to reduce pollution at the country level induces heterogeneous effects across industries within and across countries. We utilize the model to compare alternative environmental tax instruments and to evaluate their consequences for the level of carbon emissions, welfare costs, industry-specific prices and demand in various policy scenarios. Among the latter, we particularly distinguish between policies that are implemented in isolation (by single countries) or en bloc (in groups of countries or even world wide). This study pays specific attention to the implementation of various energy policies, in particular, in Switzerland. Beyond implementation of the Copenhagen Accord pledges, the study quantifies an implementation of extra taxes on carbon emissions at the amount of 1,140 Swiss Francs per ton of carbon and the substitution of nuclear energy production.

We examine the effects of globalization on the size and composition of tax revenues, worker-specific tax burdens, and effective average labor income tax rates using a unique international database on income tax calculators. We find that due to the increasing mobility of firms and high-income workers, globalization led governments in OECD countries to seek tax revenues from alternative sources, specifically from employee-borne taxes paid by relatively less mobile middleincome workers. In 1994–2007, these workers experienced a globalization-induced rise in their personal income tax rate of around 1.5 percentage points, whereas the top 1% of workers faced a reduction of approximately 1.5 percentage points.

Die Verhandlungsmacht von multinationalen Unternehmen gegenüber Steuerbehörden ist grösser als die von Firmen, welche nur lokal in einem Land operieren. Dies hat zwei Gründe. Erstens sind multinationale Unternehmen im Durchschnitt grösser und profitabler als lokale Unternehmen und generieren daher absolut mehr Steuereinnahmen für die lokalen Steuerbehörden. Sollten also Unternehmen aufgrund einer zu hohen Steuerlast mit der Abwanderung drohen, ist der potenzielle Verlust der Steuerbehörden ungleich höher, was zu grösseren Zugeständnissen der Behörde zu führen scheint. Zweitens sind multinationale Unternehmen mobiler im Sinne geringerer Reallokationskosten relativ zu lokal operierenden Firmen. Da multinationale Firmen bereits einen Teil ihrer Produktion im Ausland haben, ist es für sie einfacher, ihre komplette Produktion auszulagern. Dies macht die Drohung der Abwanderung noch glaubhafter und erhöht ebenfalls die Verhandlungsmacht von multinationalen Unternehmen gegenüber den Steuerbehörden. Egger, Strecker und Zoller-Rydzek (2018) zeigen, dass diese beiden Faktoren zu einer signifikant niedrigeren Steuerbelastung von multinationalen relativ zu rein nationalen Unternehmen führen. Sie nutzen französische Unternehmensdaten und finden, dass multinationale Unternehmen im Durchschnitt eine mehr als 6 Prozentpunkte niedrigere effektive Gewinnsteuerlast haben als vergleichbare nationale Unternehmen. Ungefähr die Hälfte dieses Effektes lässt sich mit der höheren Mobilität erklären, die andere Hälfte geht auf die unterschiedliche Unternehmensgrösse zurück.