1. Eichengreen (2007).
2. The standard reference on stagflation is probably still Bruno and Sachs (1985).
3. Eichengreen (2007), Crafts and O’Rourke (2014).
4. The figures are calculated based on the data on GDP deflator inflation given in the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.
5. Young (1999), pp. 307–8.
6. The share has declined to around 40 per cent today: see https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/sites/agriculture/files/cap-post-2013/graphs/graph1_en.pdf.
7. In fact Mrs Thatcher didn’t quite say ‘I want my money back’ at the press conference following the Council, but she very nearly did: see https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104180.
8. The White Paper is available online at http://aei.pitt.edu/1113/1/internal_market_wp_COM_85_310.pdf.
9. Emerson (1988).
10. There were ten member states when the White Paper was published in 1985. On 1 January 1986 Portugal and Spain joined the European Communities, bringing the number of member states to twelve.
11. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?isOldUri=true&uri=CELEX:61978CJ0120.
12. The text of the Single European Act is available at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:11986U/TXT.
13. ‘L’art de l’imposition consiste à plumer l’oie pour obtenir le plus possible de plumes avec le moins possible de cris.’ The initial (tax-inclusive) rate was 16.75 per cent. The German in question was Wilhelm von Siemens, the American Thomas Adams, but it is the Frenchman Maurice Lauré who is called ‘le père de la TVA’. According to some definitions, the first VAT appeared in France in 1948. See Södersten (2000) and Ebrill et al. (2001), on whom much of what follows is based.
14. Although at the time of writing the European Commission is proposing a turnover tax to be levied on digital services companies above a certain size.
15. This is how the retail sales tax works in theory. In practice many retail sales taxes end up being paid by businesses, as noted in the text below.
16. I am assuming here, for the sake of simplicity, that the consumer does not respond to the higher price of beer in the pub by drinking less. If she did, that would obviously hit all three businesses’ sales; or more systematically, thinking about adjustments in the economy as a whole, it might lower the prices they each receive for their output.
17. Ring (1989).
18. Article III.
19. Article XVI.
20. The discussion that follows is based on Keen and Smith (1996), Crawford et al. (2010), and Cnossen’s comment on Crawford et al. in the same volume.
21. Unfortunately, the delay between the times when the export VAT is refunded and import VAT is paid gives rise to profitable opportunities for fraud. In 2017 the European Commission claimed that so-called ‘carousel fraud’ costs taxpayers €50 billion annually. This involves fictitious companies setting up with the sole purpose of importing goods from an accomplice in the exporting country (that recoups export VAT from the government); when the time comes for them to pay their import VAT they have vanished. Eventually the goods can be re-exported back to the original country (and perhaps the original firm), with export VAT being reclaimed, and then the carousel can recommence. See for example Crawford et al. (2010).
22. See https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-system/qualified-majority/.
23. Article 18.2.
24. Young (1999), p. 338.