Differences in growth, productivity and inflation levels are going to be a prominent feature of the future of EMU, as the convergence process is still on-going in the new Member States. This convergence process can be described by the Balassa-Samuelson proposition, which states that faster...

This paper deals with the fiscal behaviour of governments in the 1920s and 1930s. The intention is to see whether there were the same features in government behaviour as in the post-World War II era. In par-ticular, attention is paid to asymmetric fiscal policies, ie the question of whether...

This paper investigates public pension funding using a dynamic general equilibrium macroeconomic model (DSGE) that facilitates investigation of distortionary effects of fiscal and pension policy responses to ageing. The model is calibrated to the Finnish economy, which will encounter substantial...

This paper extends Gertler’s (1999) tractable overlapping generations model with life-cycle features by allowing for distortionary taxation, demographic transition and stochastic variation in demographic structure. The model is then used to study demographic change in the small open economy of...

Using the DGE model of the Finnish Economy (the ‘Aino’ model), we study the response of the economy to reforms in both labour and product markets. The reforms are two-fold. We assume that the wage mark-up, ie the monopoly power of wage-setters is gradually reduced by 5 percentage points. At...

This study analyses the fiscal sustainability of the Finnish public sector using stochastic projections to describe uncertain future demographic trends and asset yields. While current tax rates are unlikely to yield sufficient tax revenue to finance public expenditure with an ageing population,...

We study the effect of the zero bound constraint of interest rates on international transmission of eco-nomic policy and supply shocks. After some preliminary analysis with a simple theoretical model, we ap-ply a rich two-country simulation model to the problem. The model framework consists of...

On 3 July 2015, SUERF organized its sixth joint conference with the Bank of Finland in Helsinki on the subject of liquidity and market efficiency. The one-day program consisted of an opening speech, six presentations, including three keynotes, and a lunchtime address. The present SUERF Study...