This paper analyses the effects of imputed rental income from owner-occupied housing and its taxation on income distribution in Finland. Using micro-data from the 2004 Wealth Survey produced by Statistics Finland we find that owner-occupied housing has a significant impact on the well-being of...

This study analyses possibilities for independent national redistribution and risk sharing policy in EMU by reviewing literature on fiscal federalism. The currency union will not directly affect the national welfare policy. It might increase mobility of people and capital, which would tighten...

The 1993 Finnish tax reform reduced the incentives to use debt financing in home acquisition for high-income households. Before the reform mortgage interest was deductible according to a progressive schedule creating a so-called upside-down effect, which means that the benefit from the deduction...

There are problems in the measures of the size of the public sector both from the perspective of welfare state policies, monetary policy and the analysis of the economic role of public sector in general. In practice there are several different measures (e.g. total tax rate, total government...

This publication contains the proceedings of a VATT seminar held in November 1999 in Helsinki. The purpose of the seminar was to assess greenhouse gas policy questions and related socio-economic research implications for Finland. Contributions come from both policy makers and economic...

The economic effects of an ageing population are preoccupying policy-makers in most industrial countries. In this paper, we study the economic impact of the demographic shock in Finland, a country for which the post-war fertility shock was particularly large. The framework for our analysis is an...

Disability pension benefits are governed by an application-approval procedure. Therefore, explanatory variables can have different effects on the application probability and on the actual disability transition probability. If the application phase is not considered, the estimation ignores the...

The paper is structured in two parts. The first one analyses the proposals of the European Commission concerning the reform of the European Union policies and the Eastern enlargement, set out in Agenda 2000. The second addresses the impacts of the Eastern enlargement to Portugal. The paper...