Economic convergence of the new member states (NMS) of the EU towards the old EU countries (EU-15), not only in terms of real income, but also in nominal terms, is of paramount importance for the whole of the EU. We build a dynamic CGE model, starting from the Balassa-Samuelson two-sector...

The aim of the paper is to analyse the Stability and Growth Pact of EMU in a two-country model of monetary union with rational expectations and with spillovers of macroeconomic policies between the countries. The paper concentrates on tax policy, and shows that the results on optimal policy...

We study the effects of compulsory military service in Finland on the conscripts' future labour market behaviour. This is measured in three ways: first, the time it takes to complete civil education and the level of education acquired; second, how the conscripts will find employment; and third,...

This is the country report on Finland in the project launched by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions on the social implicatins of EMU, especially in the labour market and industrial relations, insix EU countries. The report is essentially based on the...

The EU 2020 process has the key headline target of raising the average employment rate in the EU to 75 from the present 69 per cent. In this paper, we first derive a new result for optimal policymaking under uncertainty. It consists of two components: one of a unilateral policy reaction under...

The wage norm to be applied in the economy has been intensively debated in Finland. By this is meant, to which level of productivity rise the wage hikes should be linked. In this paper we examine the economy-wide productivity rise vs the industry-level rise in productivity as a basis for a wage...

We reassess the result of unsustainability of the euro with respect to inflation differentials claimed by Wickens (2007) by specifying an open-economy version of a two-region New Keynesian model for EMU and demonstrate that the result by Wickens does not hold in general. We are able to derive a...

The paper considers whether Sweden should join the EMU as based on general equilibrium (GE) effects through reduced trade barriers linked to the single cur-rency. We use in this evaluation a gravity model for trade in Europe derived and estimated in the paper, and the estimates of trade barriers...

A Climate Agreement, like the one reached in Kyoto in 1997, on reducing greenhouse gas emissions may have important effects on the global and the national economies. The aim of this paper is to make some basic numerical evaluations of the economic effects of climate policies, imposing a ceiling...