Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Legal Origin Strikes Again

van Ewijk and van Leuvensteijn have an article in VoxEU arguing for the EU to reduce taxes on residential mobility. What struck me was this chart:



The highest transactions costs are in French legal origin countries, moderate costs are seen in German and Scandinavian legal origin countries and the UK has the lowest costs. Ireland is stuck in the middle of the German group but the trend is still clear. This ordering is similar to the ordering of stringency of product and labor market regulation.

My research on sulfur emissions and now on energy efficiency has found that legal origin seems to make a difference in environmental policy. German and Scandinavian legal origin countries have the strictest environmental policies and English legal origin countries the weakest. French legal origin countries occupy an intermediate position.

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