Computing the tax-benefit position of similar "typical" households across countries is a method widely used in comparative fiscal- and social policy research. These calculations provide convenient summary pictures of certain aspects of tax-benefit systems. They can, however, be seriously...

Racial segregation in residential patterns remains pervasive in the United States. This persistence is usually attributed to some combination of neighborhood preferences over racial composition, discrimination in real estate and credit markets, and the effects of racial disparities in income. We...

Macro-based summary indicators of effective tax burdens cannot provide information on the level or distribution of the marginal effective tax rates thought to influence household behaviour. They also do not capture differences in effective tax rates facing different subgroups of the population....

Inflation can alter the characteristics of tax- and contribution systems in numerous ways. This paper demonstrates how inflation alters the distributive properties of nominally defined tax systems and looks at the impact of the tax revenues and social insurance contribution receipts generated....

Globalization is a deliberate decision to open up a national economy to the forces of product, factor and money markets, followed by a sequence of requisite policies and actions. The Indian economy shed off its 40- year long license and quota regime and went in for globalization in the early...

This note is motivated by recent arguments made by Martin Feldstein in which the relevance of inequality is dismissed (if everybody's income goes up, who cares if inequality is up too?), and the argument is made that only poverty alleviation should matter. This note shows that we all do care...

In this paper we report our findings as to the extent of poverty among the casual labourers of Shillong, the capital city of Meghalaya, India. Two views of poverty have been considered; first at the per capita (per month) income level and the second at the nutritional level. Nutritional level has...

Based on the primary data collected from 182 rural households from seven villages (five of which are inhabited by indigenous population and the rest two are inhabited by immigrants Muslim population from Bangladesh) this study aims at knowing if cultural variables make a difference to economic...