This paper illustrates the effects of using different distributions and summary measures, using New Zealand data for the period 2007 to 2011. Using an annual accounting period, alternative welfare metrics and units of analysis are investigated. In addition, the sensitivity to assumptions about...

Recent years have seen a series of natural disasters place significant social and fiscal strain on a number of economies. Determining the appropriate tax response to a natural disaster involves multiple complex decisions that often need to be made under time pressure with limited information....

This note considers the problem of distributing a fixed amount of money (‘income’) among a given number of people, such that inequality (measured by either the Gini or Atkinson measure) takes a specified value. It is well known that simultaneous equations admit of many solutions where the...

This paper offers a quantitative analysis of housing supply and demand in Spain. To this end, it formulates a model in line with the traditional models of the literature. Using Spanish data for the period 1975 to 2009, reduced form and structural models are estimated. The results obtained show...

This paper shows the utility of the elasticity of reported income to assess tax reforms in detail from the perspectives of tax revenue and well-being. We provide evidence of the value of the elasticity of reported income in Spain given the variations in marginal rates of the Personal Income Tax....

This paper analyses the latest (2005) data available from the World Bank’s InternationalComparison Program (ICP). It assesses the extent to which the prices of goods and services in New Zealand (NZ) differ from those observed in other OECD countries, and Australia in particular. The main...

Imports into New Zealand are tax-free if the duty and GST payable is less than $60. This has resulted in an effective value threshold of between $226 and $399, significantly higher than many of our trading partners. We examine other nations’ thresholds and border practices with a view to...

Firms that lie far behind the technological frontier have the most to gain from imitating the technology or management practices of others. That some firms converge relatively slowly to the productivity frontier suggests the existence of factors that cause them to underinvest in their...

The work of Feldstein (1995, 1999) has stimulated substantial conceptual and empirical advances in economists’ approaches to analysing taxpayers’ behavioural responses to changes in tax rates. Meanwhile, a largely independent literature proposing and applying alternative measures of tax...