By the mid 1990s the potential and usefulness of microsimulation models for researching tax benefit systems had found widespread acceptance. Nevertheless models were not widely available for independent or academic research in all countries of the European Union (EU). Even more important,...

We compare three EU countries that have recently experienced substantial but very different reforms of their systems to support families with children: Austria, Spain and the United Kingdom. The structure of these systems is different: Austria gives emphasis to universal benefits, Spain to tax...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate whether policy reforms in Austria between 1998 and 2005 were successful in meeting redistributive objectives and in reducing poverty. For the analysis we use the tax/benefit micro-simulation model EUROMOD. Due to the sequence of reforms and the use of two...