Given its significance in practice, piecewise linear taxation has received relatively littleattention in the literature. This paper offers a simple and transparent analysis of its maincharacteristics. We fully characterize optimal tax parameters for the cases in which budgetsets are convex and...

Does joint taxation disadvantage women? To answer that question, this paper begins byreviewing unitary and bargaining models of intrafamily allocation, and then discusses thedeterminants of "bargaining power" in a world without taxes...

When a deficit occurs in the funding of collective goods, it is usually covered by raising theamount of taxes or by rationing the supply of the goods. This article compares the efficiencyof these institutions. We report the results of a 2x2 experiment based on a game in the firststage of which...

This paper investigates the evolution of earnings inequality in urban China from 1989 to2006. After decomposing the variance of log of earnings into transitory and permanent twoparts, we find that both components are important contributors to the total variance ofearnings. We also find that the...

Using data on annual individual labor income from three representative panel datasets(German SOEP, British BHPS, Australian HILDA) we investigate a) the selectivity of itemnon-response (INR) and b) the impact of imputation as a prominent post-survey means tocope with this type of measurement...

Standard search models are unreliable for structural inference of the underlying sources ofwage inequality because they are inconsistent with observed residual wage dispersion. Weaddress this issue by modeling skill development and duration dependence in unemploymentbenefits in a random on the...

This paper provides an introduction and overview of my research on the Economics of Language. The approach is that language skills among immigrants and native-born linguistic minorities are a form of human capital. There are costs and benefits associated with this characteristic embodied in the...

We use HILDA data from 2001 - 2006 to analyse the source of the gender wage gap across public- and private-sector wage distributions in Australia. We are particularly interested in the role of gender segregation within sector-specific occupations in explaining relative wages. We find that,...