Highlights Archives - IREF Europe https://en.irefeurope.org/category/highlights/ Independent research and policy analysis on fiscal, monetary, and regulatory issues in Europe Sun, 23 Jan 2022 12:36:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://en.irefeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2026/04/IREF-LinkedIn-Profile-DarkBlue-scaled.png Highlights Archives - IREF Europe https://en.irefeurope.org/category/highlights/ 32 32 Italian Puzzles: will the announced tax cut be real? https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article/italian-puzzles-will-the-announced-tax-cut-be-real/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=italian-puzzles-will-the-announced-tax-cut-be-real https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article/italian-puzzles-will-the-announced-tax-cut-be-real/#comments Wed, 08 Dec 2021 09:04:20 +0000 https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article-italian-puzzles-will-the-announced-tax-cut-be-real/ Mario Draghi’s government is about to approve an eight-billion euro tax cut – about 1.5% of the estimated 2021 tax revenues. Is this a credible a promise or just an illusion?
The restrictions that followed Covid-19 have taken a heavy toll. Last year, GDP dropped about 9%, tax revenues decreased, and government expenditure soared. As a result, the budget deficit reached around 9.5% of GDP. The 2021 figure should be about the same. Of course, public debt has also risen and is expected to reach 150% of GDP by the end of this year (see Fig. 1).

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]]> https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article/italian-puzzles-will-the-announced-tax-cut-be-real/feed/ 1 The German real estate transfer tax: a race to the top https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article/the-german-real-estate-transfer-tax-a-race-to-the-top/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-german-real-estate-transfer-tax-a-race-to-the-top https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article/the-german-real-estate-transfer-tax-a-race-to-the-top/#respond Wed, 01 Dec 2021 10:39:34 +0000 https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article-the-german-real-estate-transfer-tax-a-race-to-the-top/ Since the 2006 reform, Germany’s federal states are free to set the tax rate concerning real estate transfers. Yet, decentralising tax power has not led to lower taxation. In fact, the opposite happened: since 2006, average tax levels for real estate have risen from 3.5% to 5.4%,: no state has ever decreased the tax rate, and except for Bavaria and Saxony, all states have increased the rate at least once.

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]]> https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article/the-german-real-estate-transfer-tax-a-race-to-the-top/feed/ 0 The (missing) link between temperature and economic growth https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article/the-missing-link-between-temperature-and-economic-growth/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-missing-link-between-temperature-and-economic-growth https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article/the-missing-link-between-temperature-and-economic-growth/#respond Wed, 24 Nov 2021 12:21:43 +0000 https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article-the-missing-link-between-temperature-and-economic-growth/ According to the recent report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global average temperature increase over the period 1850–1900 was about 1.1°C by the 2010s. Several countries in the world have seen increases in average temperatures approaching 2°C. From 1820 to 2016, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in most of the Western world grew by about 25 times, and in the non-Western world by 13.5 times. This economic growth has been associated with enormous improvements in different indicators of human well-being, such as higher life expectancy, lower child mortality, and lower malnutrition.

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