We develop a formula for user costs of housing on the basis of a neoclassical approach to housing investment which does not impose a perfect capital market assumption. We suggest that the definition for the user costs of housing should be extended by an additional term which mirrors the credit...

This paper analyzes Germany's fiscal policy position. Half of GDP passes through the hands of government, a high debt to GDP ratio limits the maneuvering, and the revenue sharing mechanism prevents a competitive federalism. Most importantly for the future, the federal finance minister has to...

In an economy with distortionary taxes on labor, can subsidies on day care, financed by an increase in taxes, raise welfare by encouraging women with small children to work? We show, within a heterogeneous-agent life-cycle framework, that the Ramsey optimal policy consists in equalizing...

The equilibrium conditions for an economic system that produces output with several factors of production and which is subject to technological constraints are derived. Optimization of either output minus cost or integrated utility yields the conditions that output elasticities must be equal to...

In an economy with distortionary taxes on labor, can subsidies on day care, financed by an increase in taxes, raise welfare by encouraging women with small children to work? We show, within a heterogeneous-agent life-cycle framework, that the Ramsey optimal policy consists in equalizing...

We develop a formula for user costs of housing on the basis of a neoclassical approach to housing investment which does not impose a perfect capital market assumption. We suggest that the definition for the user costs of housing should be extended by an additional term which mirrors the credit...

We study the behavior of output, employment, consumption, and investment in Germany during the Great Depression of 1928-37. In this time period, real wages were countercyclical, and productivity and fiscal policy was procyclical. We use the neoclassical growth model to investigate how much these...

We develop a formula for user costs of housing on the basis of a neoclassical approach to housing investment which does not impose a perfect capital market assumption. We suggest that the definition for the user costs of housing should be extended by an additional term which mirrors the credit...

We study the behavior of output, employment, consumption, and investment in Germany during the Great Depression of 1928-37. In this time period, real wages were countercyclical, and productivity and fiscal policy were procyclical. We use the neoclassical growth model to investigate how much...

We study the long-run interaction between Germany’s economic growth trajectory and demographic aging. Using a comprehensive dataset, we leverage the classical production function approach to estimate potential output growth between 1970 and 2070. We account for the inherent uncertainty in our...