This paper investigates the impact of fiscal policy on profits using panel data for 19 high-income OECD countries during the period 1975-1999. We estimate a profit equation in which profits depend on a set of fiscal variables. Our empirical method is based on a consistent treatment of the...

Environmental protection is one of Europe's key values. The EU has set clear policy objectives to achieve its environmental goals. The EU has favoured market-based instruments, among which fiscal instruments to tackle the climate change problem. This paper takes a policy-making perspective and...

This paper studies the effect of child-care subsidies on parental labour supply. I use variation arising from changes in the municipality-specific supplement to Finnish child homecare allowance to identify the causal effect of subsidies on the labour force participation of parents. The variation...

This paper develops a simple model that can be used to estimate the effectiveness of Cohesion expenditure relative to similar but unsubsidized projects, thereby making it possible to explicitly test an important assumption that is often implicit in estimates of the impact of Cohesion policies....

We study the environmental and economic effects of public abatement in the presence of multiple stable steady-state ecological equilibria. Under shallow-lake dynamics (SLD), the isocline for the stock of pollution features two stable branches, a good and a bad one. Assuming that the ecology is...

We provide evidence for a beneficial welfare impact of a crime policy that is targeted at strengthening victim precaution. Regulation made application of the electronic engine immobilizer, a simple and low-cost anti-theft device, mandatory for all new cars sold within the European Union as of...

We estimate that the euro has increased trade within the eurozone by about 26 per cent and trade between the eurozone and outsiders by about 12 per cent on average for the years 2002- 2005 compared to 1995-1998. The percentage increases were smaller for products that were exported every year...

Poland is obligated to adopt the euro after the fulfilment, inter alia, of the exchange rate criterion which requires entering the Exchange Rate Mechanism II (ERM II). The European Central Bank recommends that the ERM II central rate should reflect the best possible assessment of the equilibrium...

We briefly review the theoretical and empirical consequences of discretionary fiscal policy changes, after which we provide our own estimates for the EU countries. A fiscal expansion raises output and consumption and reduces the trade balance. Moreover, the stimulating effect of higher...

In the past two decades privatisation and liberalisation of network industries providing services of general economic interest (SGEI), have been particularly significant in the European Union. Wide variations around a common policy trend can, however, be observed across countries and sectors. We...