This paper contributes to the debate about the optimal design of tax-transfer systems. Basedon the theory of optimal taxation, combined with microsimulation and microeconometrictechniques we derive the welfare function which makes the current German tax and transfersystem for single women optimal...

The UK´s Equal Opportunities Commission has recently drawn attention to the hidden braindrain when women working part-time are employed in occupations below those for whichthey are qualified. These inferences were based on self-reporting...

Two particular features of the position of women in the British labour market are theextensive role of part-time work and the large part-time pay penalty. Part-time work featuresmost prominently when women are in their 30s, the peak childcare years and, particularly formore educated women, a...

This paper uses British panel data to investigate single women´s labour supply changes inresponse to three tax and benefit policy reforms that occurred in the 1990s. These reformschanged individuals´ work incentives and we use them to identify changes in labour supply.We find evidence of small...

This paper examines the effects of the Working Families´ Tax Credit (WFTC) on couples inBritain. We develop a simple model of household decisions which explicitly accounts for therole played by the tax and benefit system. Its main implications are then tested using paneldata from the British...

In this paper we develop a model to consistently estimate the intertemporal labor supplybehavior on the extensive margin (participation decision) and the intensive margin (workinghours decision). In this framework we distinguish between voluntary non-participation andinvoluntary unemployment...

We investigate the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse foruniversity admissions (ZVS) in medicine and related subjects. This mechanism consists ofthree procedures based on final grades from school ("Abiturbestenverfahren","Auswahlverfahren der Hochschulen") and on waiting...

Using a novel dataset from the 2006 Portuguese Labor Force Survey this paper examinesthe impact of a voluntary reduction in hours of work, before retirement, on the moment of exitfrom the labor force. If, as often suggested, flexibility in hours of work is a useful measure topostpone retirement,...

We estimate the responses of gross labor earnings with respect to marginal and average netof-tax rates in France over the period 2003-2006. We exploit a series of reforms to theincome-tax and the payroll-tax schedules that affect individuals who earn less than twice theminimum wage. Our estimate...

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...