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In recent years, the problems of Russian gas supplies to Europe got quite serious as the events of January 2009 have shown. From an economic point of view, the sources of these problems are the monopoly of Ukraine as a transit country, on one hand, and Russian monopoly on supplies of gas to Ukraine, on the other. The paper analyses different schemes of supplying Russian gas to Europe and Ukraine. It is shown that under existing agreements on supplies of Russian gas to Europe, Ukraine does not take proper advantage of its position as a monopoly transit country. On its part, Russia could benefit by setting the price of gas supplied to Ukraine as a function of transit tariff set by Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In Europe, the preferential tax treatment of company cars implies that many employees receive a company car as part of their compensation package. In this paper, we consider a model in which wages and the decision whether or not to provide a company car are the result of direct negotiation between employer and employee. Using this framework, we theoretically and numerically study first- and second-best optimal tax policies on labour and transport markets, focusing on the role of the tax treatment of company cars. We obtain the following results. First, higher labour taxes and a more favourable tax treatment of company cars raise the fraction employees that receives a company car; congestion and congestion tolls reduce it. Second, in countries that provide large implicit subsidies to company cars, eliminating the preferential tax treatment of company cars may be an imperfect but quite effective substitute for currently unavailable congestion tolls. The numerical illustration, calibrated using Belgian data, suggests that it yields about half the welfare gain attainable through optimal congestion taxes. Third, the favourable tax treatment of company cars justifies large public transport subsidies; the numerical results are consistent with zero public transport fares. Finally, we find that earlier models that ignored the preferential tax treatment of company cars may have substantially underestimated optimal congestion tolls in Europe. The numerical illustration suggests that about one third of the optimal congestion toll we obtain can be attributed to the current tax treatment of company cars. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper analyzes the use of market-based emission regulation instruments to address the carbon dioxide emissions of transportation. Simulations with a static multi-region computable general equilibrium model show that including transportation into the European emission trading system is superior to a closed emission trading system for transportation or a tax-based approach. Furthermore, we show that exempting transportation from emission regulation is the most favorable approach in terms of welfare. This counterintuitive result is due to a large tax-interaction effect caused by high pre-existing fuel taxes in the transport sector. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article focuses on the study concerning the financing of transport infrastructure in the French monarchy during the eighteenth century. It states that the financing issue includes a deep quandary, wherein all the people need to pay the income tax, even those who do not necessarily use the roads. It notes that the eighteenth century is described with such progressive change that sweeps away the existing feudalism vestiges and with the emersion of a capitalist financing system that gave rise to the development and improvement of infrastructures. It cites that the toll reform led by the monarchy during the eighteenth century was established because of the alterations caused by the French revolution in 1790.