This paper studies the impact of increased price information on the functioning of the housing market. We first study the implications of new information for market outcomes in a theoretical framework so as to disentangle the potential channels through which information may be important. The...

This thesis consists of an introduction to the economic analysis of housing markets (Chapter 1) and three studies each analyzing different housing policy instruments. Chapter 2 examines the effect on housing construction of the Finnish property tax system. The focus is on the effects of taxing...

This paper uses a Finnish policy intervention to study tax competition among local governments. Changes in the statutory lower limits to the property tax rates are used as a source of exogenous variation to estimate the responses of municipalities to tax rates in their neighbouring...

This paper examines the effect on housing construction of taxing undeveloped residential land at a higher rate than developed land. In 2001, Finnish municipalities were allowed to levy an extra property tax on undeveloped land zoned for housing. The aim of the reform was to encourage housing...

Private rental markets in Finland were subject to rent control from 1967 until the beginning of the 1990s when the rent control system was gradually abolished. This study estimates the costs and benefits of rent control to tenants in private rental dwellings in 1990 using the years 1998 and 2001...

Abstract In this study we examine the effect of church tax on the church membership decision using Finnish data. We present both descriptive statistics from an opting-out website and econometric evidence exploiting the panel structure of a large individual-level data set. Our descriptive...

We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax on household mobility using micro data. Exploiting a discontinuity in the tax schedule as a quasiexperimental setting, we isolate the impact of the stamp duty from other determinants of mobility. We compare homeowners with self-assessed house...

We test whether voters are rational in the sense that their decision to vote depends on its expected impact on the election outcomes. By using exogenous variation in pivotal probabilities that arise at population thresholds determining council sizes in Finnish municipal elections, we provide the...