This paper analyses some fiscal aspects of mortgage debt in the EU. It first describes the main fiscal instruments that governments use to affect mortgage-financed home-ownership. In the empirical part, real mortgage debt growth is analysed for 15 EU countries using pooled regressions. Fiscal...

We estimate the consumption response of Italian households to the "€80 tax bonus" introduced in 2014, using the panel component on the Survey of Household Income and Wealth. We find that households that received the tax rebate increased their monthly consumption of food and means of...

We use changes in Brazil's tax on capital inflows from 2006 to 2011 to test for direct portfolio effects and externalities from capital controls on investor portfolios. The analysis is structured based on information from investor interviews. We find that an increase in Brazil's tax on foreign...

We characterize the Laffer curves for labor taxation and capital income taxation quantitatively for the US, the EU-14 and individual European countries by comparing the balanced growth paths of a neoclassical growth model featuring "constant Frisch elasticity" (CFE) preferences. We derive...

This paper investigates the relationship between government debt and labour taxation for a panel of 18 EU countries over the period 1979-2008. The econometric estimates point to a statistically significant and economically relevant positive response of labour taxation to changes in the general...

The empirical literature using vector autoregressive models to assess the effects of fiscal policy shocks strongly disagrees on even the qualitative response of key macroeconomic variables to government spending and tax shocks. We provide new evidence for the U.S. over the period 1955-2006. We...

In recent years a number of European countries have shifted their tax structure more strongly towards indirect taxes, motivated, inter alia, by the intention to foster competitiveness. Against this background, this paper develops a tractable two- country model of a monetary union, characterised...

The recent financial crisis deeply affected the money market yield curve and thus, potentially, the proper functioning of the interest rate channel of monetary policy transmission. Therefore, we analyze the effectiveness of monetary policy in steering euro area money market rates using two...

We explore a view of the crisis as a shock to investor sentiment that led to the collapse of a bubble or pyramid scheme in financial markets. We embed this view in a standard model of the financial accelerator and explore its empirical and policy implications. In particular, we show how the...

We investigate the effect of securitization activity on banks’ lending standards using evidence from pricing behavior on the syndicated loan market. We find that banks more active at originating asset-backed securities are also more aggressive on their loan pricing practices. This suggests...