IREF

The Institute for Research in Economic and Fiscal Issues was founded in 2002 by representatives of the civil society coming from the academic and business world and willing to establish an efficient platform to investigate fiscal and taxation questions. As a matter of fact, taxation may be considered as a many-faceted issue and existing studies are mostly incomplete if not biased. The need to explore systematically and completely the question was obvious to IREF’s founding members. It can be asserted that this need has also an emergency aspect. Tax studies can no longer ignore the globalisation process and the consequences of this evolution on the magnitude of tax competition.
Nowadays IREF’s research interests are numerous and range from taxation to education, from public spending to housing, from health care to retirement. Policy makers are currently under the strain of two opposite forces: centralisation and harmonization on one hand, devolution and competition and globalization on the other hand. Eager to cross knowledge from economics, statistics, law studies and politics, IREF seeks to create a starting place for thoughts and proposals about various economic policies. In order to achieve its goals, IREF is editing books, reports and academic studies. IREF’s experts are covering the European current events related to taxation and economic policy and you can find every week on our website their comments and analysis.

IREF is a free-market oriented think tank. It promotes ideas, events, and academic research.

With regard to research, IREF supports original projects that lead to the production of papers of academic quality of at least 7,000 words. This support is not a prize to published work, nor is it an encouragement to “work in progress”.

In a new IREF Working Paper Stefano Adamo of the University of Banja Luka turns to a young genre of Italian literature. Adamo analyzes four novels that revolve around the financial crises of the year 2008 and the government debt crises of the 2010s. What is special is that the authors of the novels can look back at a career in finance. As insiders they can illustrate processes within banks and on financial markets in Italy from first hand experience. In the working paper, Adamo unpacks in detail how the authors depict the financial industry. The industry as well as its protagonists do not fare well. According to the authors, the world of finance is populated by irrational, overly risk-loving individuals. Many of them are questionably entangled with politics. In a sentence, all the novels contain a strong plea for more regulation.

IREF is a free-market oriented think tank. It promotes ideas, events, and academic research. With regard to research, IREF supports original projects that lead to the production of papers of academic quality of at least 7,000 words. This support is not a prize to published work, nor is it an encouragement to “work in progress”.

According to a recent representative survey conducted by Der Spiegel, a majority in Germany does not consider the country’s income distribution to be fair. 47.3 percent of the respondents consider the income distribution to be „definitely not fair“ and for 27.5 percent it is „rather not fair“. Only 4.4 percent perceive it as „definitely fair“ and 12.5 percent as „rather fair“. However, is the observed income inequality really unfair? And, what degree of inequality would be fair? An IREF Working Paper by Pablo Duarte tackles these questions empirically.

In a new IREF Working Paper, David Stadelmann (Bayreuth University and IREF) and his co-authors discuss how the corona epidemic can be made less burdensome. They focus on the role of those who are immune after recovering from the illness and do not pose any health risks to others. The authors point to corona immunity as a resource that should be searched, found, produced, certified, and finally employed to ease the way out of the lockdown.

The recent decision of the German Bundestag against the introduction of an opt out solution for organ donation has surprised many people. After all, the two leading health politicians of the coalition, CDU Health Minister Jens Spahn and SPD Health politician Karl Lauterbach, had publicly supported the opt out solution. In the vote on organ donation, however, the usual party discipline did not apply.

According to Article 38 of the German Constitution, the members of parliament “… are not bound to orders and instructions and are only subject to their conscience.” In practice, however, before a decision is made in the Bundestag, votes are taken in the respective parliamentary groups, and MPs usually follow this result. Parliamentary group discipline is also laid down in coalition agreements.

What influences the voting behaviour of members of parliament? Do they follow their own preferences, the party’s line, the whispers of interest groups or do they listen to their voters? In the latest IREF Working Paper, David Stadelmann of the University of Bayreuth and Gustavo Torrens of Indiana University examine the question of how strong the influence of different groups on political decisions is, exploiting unique data from Switzerland

In the new IREF working paper “Taxing Artificial Intelligences”, Julian Arndts and Kalle Kappner analyse the fiscal implications of the presence of artificial-intelligence (AI) machines in the production processes.

The latest tariff debate between the United States and China, and between the US and the European Union, could give the impression that tariffs are the only impediment to global…

Crises, shortages, and bad news are often dominating daily politics and media coverage. Under the radar of politics and media, however, highly desirable developments have been taking place. Among those…