This paper uses a survey-based approach to test alternative methods of channeling tax relief to donors - as a tax rebate for the donor or as a matched payment to the receiving charity. On accounting grounds these two are equivalent but, in line with earlier experimental studies, we find that...

We present a new class of social cost-of-living indices and a nonparametric framework for estimating these and other social cost-of-living indices. Common social cost-of-living indices can be understood as aggregator functions of approximations of individual cost-of-living indices. The Consumer...

We report an empirical analysis of the responses of the supply and demand for secondary care to waiting list size and waiting times. Whereas previous empirical analyses have used data aggregated to area level, our analysis is novel in that it focuses on the supply responses of a single hospital...

Personal taxes and benefits affect the incentive to work over the lifecycle by altering income-age profiles, insuring against adverse shocks, and changing the returns to human capital. Previous work investigating the impact of taxes and benefits on work incentives has tended to ignore these...

In this paper we look at lifetime inequality to address two main questions: How well does a modern tax system, based on annual information, target lifetime inequality? What aspects of the tranfser system are most progressive from a lifetime perspective? To answer to these questions it is crucial...

In 2007 and 2008 Polish governments introduced a series of reforms which led to a substantial reduction in the tax "wedge" (in Polish: "klin") on labour. The mean ATR on total labour cost was reduced from 41.6% to 34.0%. We show that when considered together the package of introduced reforms...

Identifying the effect of differential taxation on portfolio allocation requires exogenous variation in marginal tax rates. Marginal tax rates vary with income, but income surely affects portfolio choice directly. In systems of individual taxation - like Canada's - couples with the same...

The goals of income transfer systems in the US and the UK for low-income families are to reduce poverty and welfare dependency and encourage work. Both the US and UK have made in-work benefits a key part of their strategy through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Working Families' Tax...

The UK's Labour Government has expanded means-testing of social security but attempted to do so while minimising the disincentive effects typically associated with such an approach. We test whether it has succeeded by reviewing the effect of 5 years of reforms on a range of incentives across the...

<p><p>Income Tax and National Insurance are now sufficiently similar that merging them appears to be a plausible option, yet still sufficiently different that integration raises significant difficulties. This paper surveys the potential benefits of integration - increased transparency and reduced...</p></p>