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IEB Report 2/2016

The globalization process has increased the mobility of firms across state boundaries.Yet, the combination of multinational firms, the low degree of tax harmonization and imperfect information sharing between countries has had far-reaching effects on corporate taxation1.Today, it is more than evident that the taxation of multinationals has become an issue of broad social concern. For instance, in Spain, the relatively low tax bills paid by companies such as Apple, Google and Amazon have attracted considerable media attention2. In the UK, customers have boycotted Starbucks because of the company’s tax avoidance practices3. At the same time, a number of policy responses have been recorded. Some countries have adopted policies to clamp down on the tax avoidance practices of large corporations, while the European Commission is fighting tax ruling agreements between large multinationals and tax havens4.

IEB Report 1/2016

Over the last two years, Europe has witnessed the arrival of the greatest number of displaced persons since the Second World War. The principal cause of this has unquestionably been the intensification throughout 2015 of the war in Syria.

IEB Report 4/2015

The recent economic and financial crisis, commonly dubbed the Great Recession, hit European economies hard in 2007. Indeed, the severity of this economic shock was huge – and partially unexpected. The financial crisis, caused by the accumulation of financial imbalances, subsequently triggered the European sovereign debt crisis: A situation in which government debt in some European countries became highly unsustainable and bond yield spreads rose rapidly.This series of events found the European Union largely unprepared. For the first time, the Union experienced the direct consequences of the imperfections of European integration, which had accumulated over the preceding decades. In this situation, which called for rapid policy responses, Europe’s reaction was slow, held back by its existing institutional shortcomings.

IEB Report 3/2015

The Great Recession has revealed serious shortcomings in the design of the monetary union, a set of shortcomings that have led to serious imbalances, above all with regards to external debt and current account balance, in the less competitive countries of the euro area (the so-called peripheral countries), as well as between these peripheral countries and the core countries of the eurozone.
These imbalances did not suddenly appear when the crisis broke out, neither are they a consequence of it, rather just the reverse. The crisis highlighted just how severe they were and just how unsustainable they had become, bringing about the closure of the financial markets. Indeed, the imbalances had been allowed to gradually build up during the boom years, in the face of the widespread indifference and unawareness of all the economic agents – the national central banks, the ECB, regulators, governments, markets, rating agencies, debtors (who got into deeper debt than they could afford) and creditors (who assumed more risks than was prudent).

IEB Report 2/2015

The little weight given to the European Union (EU) budget – barely 1% of the Members States’ GDP – and the Union’s limited autonomy in terms of revenue – 80% of its revenues being derived from its share in the value added tax (VAT) and gross national income (GNI) of each State, contrast with its other federal structures1.The first of these characteristics inevitably means that the EU’s monetary policy has to serve as a stabilising mechanism to offset the asymmetric shocks suffered by its Member States, while the second implicitly means that economic agents – especially those businesses with a presence in several Member States – have to deal with different tax systems, with the consequent costs of tax compliance, but also with opportunities for tax arbitrage within the Union, for example, through the exploitation of so-called “transfer pricing” techniques.

IEB Report 1/2015

Corruption is currently perceived as being one of the main problems affecting Spanish society. According to the latest barometer survey conducted by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), 50% of the population identifies corruption and fraud as being among Spain’s three main problems1. Only the problem of unemployment is considered to be more serious, being identified by 80% of the population surveyed. Since the beginning of the last decade, coinciding with the housing market boom, numerous cases of corruption associated with the urban planning policies of local government have been reported. The bursting of the housing bubble in 2009 did not, however, mean the disappearance of corruption, but the coming to light (though not necessarily the beginning) of other forms of corruption, including cases linked to the financing of the political parties.