The current international tax system diverges greatly from a theoretically 'optimal' tax system. One reason for this discrepancy may be that politicians strive for other objectives rather than making tax rules that comply with the theoretical concepts of optimal taxation. In this article, I...

Since the mid-1990s, countries offering tax systems that facilitate international tax avoidance and evasion have been facing growing political pressure to comply with the internationally agreed standards of exchange of tax information. Using data of German investments in tax havens, we find...

Even today, contractual saving for housing (CSH) through building societies (\textit{Bausparkassen}) is one of the major sources for housing financing in several countries in Continental Europe. The origins of CSH can be traced back to 1920s Germany. In this time, a weak and financially...

Housing markets display several correlations to multiple economic sectors of an economy. Their enormous impact on economies’ health, wealth, and stability is uncontroversial. Interestingly, the forms of financing residential property vary widely between the different countries in terms of...

We examine hurricane exposure as a systematic risk factor in the US stock market. Motivated by a consumption-based asset pricing model with heterogeneous agents, we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for a hurricane risk premium in the cross-section of stock returns. Empirically, we...

The current international tax system diverges greatly from a theoretically ‘‘optimal’’ tax system. One reason for this discrepancy may be that politicians strive for other objectives rather than making tax rules that comply with the theoretical concepts of optimal taxation. In this...

Encouraging private investment in the EU is currently a primary goal of the European Commission. However, the effectiveness of public policies to stimulate private investment - such as a European Fund for Strategic Investments, which was recently proposed by the president of the European...