Suchergebnisse

Labor mobility is commonly taken as a property of an optimal currency area. But how does that property a¤ect the outcome of fiscal policies? We address this issue with a two country ?two period model, where both asymmetric and symmetric productivity shocks may hit the countries. We show that perfect (costless) labour mobility is not necessarily welfare improving, since it prevents the national fiscal authorities from pursuing indepen- dent policies, opening the way to a coordination problem between them, which is particularly relevant when the two countries di¤er for their intertemporal preferences. With symmetric shocks, the federal fiscal policy can improve welfare over national policies by playing a coordinating role. With asymmet- ric shocks, the federal fiscal policy allows both countries to reach a higher productive efficiency; to do that, the federal government must be endowed with a federal budget, playing a stronger role than plain coordination between countries.

This paper addresses transboundary environmental problems in the context of an optimal tax problem, when part of the labor force is mobile across countries. The policy instruments include both commodity taxation and nonlinear income taxation. We show how the tax policy in a noncooperative equilibrium differs from that corresponding to a cooperative equilibrium. The results also indicate how a 'global policy maker' must act in order to make the national policy makers replicate the cooperative equilibrium.

1. Introduction -- 2. Global Human Migration -- 3. Slavery - The Ancient and Medieval Periods -- 4. Slavery in the New World - the Saga of Native Indians -- 5. Slavery in the New World - The Saga of Black Africans -- 6. Indentured Servitude - The Saga of the Indians and the Chinese -- 7. Temporary Cross-Border Mobility Since World War I -- 8. Cross-Border Labor Mobility - Europe -- 9. Cross-Border Labor Mobility - The United States -- 10. Cross-Border Labor Mobility in the Twenty-First Century -- 11. Theoretical Perspectives on Cross-Border Labor Mobility.