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Im Rahmen der Ökologisierung von Abgabensystemen spielen föderale Aspekte in der Regel keine Rolle. Die finanzwissenschaftliche Literatur bietet jedoch Kriterien zur Festlegung der staatlichen Ebene, die für die Bepreisung unterschiedlicher negativer Externalitäten am besten geeignet wäre. Im österreichischen Kontext wären sowohl die stärkere Ökologisierung des Abgabensystems als auch in bestimmten Bereichen eine stärkere Dezentralisierung umweltbezogener Steuern und Abgaben überlegenswert.

In contrast to other large economies, the euro area shows a high regional dispersion of inflation rates since the mid of 2021. The energy price shock uncovered structural differences among member countries of the currency union. Additionally, European governments responded with administrative or fiscal interventions of varying degree. A consistent pattern emerges with low inflation countries implementing policies dampening the HICP more intensively, while high inflation countries behaved more restrained. Potential monetary policy responses to an energy price shock include a differential weighting of country specific inflation rates in the loss function or, alternatively, macroprudential measures. If a wage-price spiral is set in motion, the ECB would have to swiftly raise the key interest rates to confirm its commitment to the inflation target.

Ukraine-Krieg und COVID-19-Pandemie trüben die Konjunkturaussichten ein. Für das Jahr 2022 wird ein Wirtschaftswachstum von 4½% erwartet, das in den Folgejahren auf durchschnittlich 1½% pro Jahr zurückgeht.

With around 90 percent of the average retirement income received from public pension entitlements, the Austrian pension system is very reliant on the first pillar. Occupational pensions are primarily offered through pension funds and insurance companies. Direct commitments are an alternative vehicle, but their usage stagnates. The option for defined contribution (DC) plans with favourable tax treatment offered either by pension funds or insurance companies boosted the prevalence of occupational pensions in Austria. While occupational pensions have become more popular over time, low interest rates and a high liquidity preference dampened demand for individual life insurance contracts. Over the years 2002 through 2021, the performance of pension funds in real net terms has been positive, with an annualised average return of 1.5 percent before tax. The life insurance industry followed a distinctly more conservative investment policy and achieved an average annual net real return before tax of 1.9 percent.

While taxes on wealth for a long time played only a marginal role in the public finance and taxation literature, the increase of wealth inequality and concentration in many EU countries has spurred new interest in wealth taxation. At the same time, recurrent net wealth taxes have almost completely disappeared in Europe, inter alia due to fears of asset and taxpayer migration. The paper provides estimates of the revenue that could be raised from an EU-wide net wealth tax enabling the containment of migration responses, using data from the Household, Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). To account for differential non-response, we augment the HFCS with data from the Forbes rich list as well as national rich lists and replace the top tail of the wealth distribution according to the HFCS by an estimated Pareto distributed top tail. To account for underreporting we scale aggregate financial assets in the HFCS to match their counterparts outlined in the National Accounts. We estimate that a moderately progressive net wealth tax levied at a rate of 1 percent on net wealth between 1 and 5 million €, and 1.5 percent on wealth above 5 million €, could raise between 165 and 177 billion € after accounting for avoidance and evasion responses. Such an EU harmonised net wealth tax would affect only a small fraction of households, ranging between 0.41 percent in Latvia and 8.65 percent in Belgium.

We assess the effectiveness of the financial sector stabilisation measures taken by the Austrian authorities in the wake of the global financial crisis. Employing an event study methodology, we evaluate domestic and cross-border effects involving Central, Eastern and South-eastern European economies. We identify recapitalisations and public guarantees as the most effective sovereign interventions. Both mitigate financial market stress at home and abroad. However, a risk-shifting effect emerges at the sovereign's expense which undermines their effectiveness relative to monetary policy interventions. Moreover, in complement to the actual implementation, the mere announcement of interventions already mitigates financial market stress, underscoring the extent of policy credibility.