This paper presents an applied general equilibrium model for Germany. The model integrates specific labour market institutions in an otherwise standard general equilibrium framework. There are sectoral wage negotiations for two skill types of workers between firms and trade unions. The...

This paper considers a setting in which the acquisition of human capital entails a change of location in social space that causes individuals to revise their comparison groups. Skill levels are viewed as occupational groups, and moving up the skill ladder by acquiring additional human capital,...

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...

This paper examines the optimal time path of the tax rate, in a model where an increasing ratio of government debt to GDP is projected in the absence of policy changes.

This paper identifies tax policy that both speeds recovery from the current economic crisis and contributes to long-run growth. This is a challenge because short-term recovery requires increases in demand while long-term growth requires increases in supply. As short-term tax concessions can be...

This paper studies the short-run macroeconomic effects of legislated tax changes in Germany using a vector autoregression (VAR) approach. Identification of the tax shock follows the narrative approach recently proposed by Romer and Romer (2010). Results indicate a moderate, but statistically...

This paper estimates the effects of tax changes on the U.K. economy. Identification is achieved by isolating the 'exogenous' tax policy shocks in the post-war U.K. economy using a narrative strategy as in Romer and Romer (2010). The resulting tax changes are shown to be unforecastable on the...

We use a model of domestic and international tourist numbers and flows to estimate the impact of the recent and proposed changes in the Air Passenger Duty (APD) of the United Kingdom. We find that the recent doubling of the APD has the perverse effect of increasing carbon dioxide emissions,...

This article deals with the conditions for profitability of company pensions, comparing the in fluence of immediate and deferred taxation under different rules of funding the pension contributions. The model provides a systematic general framework to investigate incentive compatibility of such...

In entrepreneurial decisions making uncertain future profits often are a main characteristics of real investment opportunities. If investors can react to uncertainty the degree of irreversibility and timing flexibility inherent in the available project should be integrated into the decision...