The draft treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union states that each member state may withdraw from the European Union following its own constitutional requirements. We argue that such a rule could lead into an increased use of threat of withdrawal to extract concessions in...

Most households have most of their wealth in the form of housing. We analyze how this distributional feature shapes the political economy of housing taxation. We build a simple dynamic general equilibrium model where households vote over the tax treatment of housing and business capital. The...

In a dynamic setting, housing capital is both an asset and a consumption good. But should it be taxed like other forms of consumption or like other forms of capital? We analyze this question by considering the taxation of housing capital in a version of the neoclassical growth model. We derive...

In a dynamic setting, housing is both an asset and a consumption good. But should it be taxed like other forms of consumption or like other forms of saving? We consider the optimal taxation of the imputed rent from owner housing within a version of the neoclassical growth model. We find that the...

We study how a household borrowing constraint the the form of a down payment requirement affects house price dynamics in an OLG model with standard preferences. We find that in certain situations the borrowing constraint shapes house price dynamics substantially. The importance of the constraint...

We study the welfare effects of earnings testing flat-rate old-age benefits in a quantitative overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic labor income risk. In our model economy, even a moderate earnings testing reduces individualsŽ expected lifetime utility. Moreover, it also lowers the...

We analyze how changes in the mandatory pension system and the increasing life expectancy will affect the need for private retirement savings in Finland. The time horizon we consider is that of current young generations. We discuss private retirement savings from the point of view households,...

We compare different tax incentive schemes for private R&D investments using a numerical model of R&D-investments and firm dynamics. We find that tax incentives that are based on the incremental annual spending increase firms' R&D spending much more than tax incentives that are based on the...