The inequality in pre-tax income increases in Norway in the 1990s, while the distribution of taxes is about unaltered. This means that tax progressivity has decreased in the period, as measured by summary indices of tax progressivity. This paper discusses to what extent this observed decrease in...

Given that structural labor supply models continue to play a key role in the process of policy design, it is important to validate their capacity to provide reasonable predictions of alternative hypothetical policy options. Comparing outcomes before and after a realized policy change (such as a...

We examine the allocation of hours of work across industrial sectors in OECD countries. We find large disparities across three sector groups, one that produces goods without home substitutes, and two others that have home substitutes but are treated differently by welfare policy. We attribute...

Procedures of revenue estimation of changes in the personal income tax are discussed. Using revenue estimates of the 2006 tax cuts in the personal income tax in Norway as an example, we show that estimates of costs of cuts differ substantially when different effects are brought into...

We develop and estimate a microeconometric model of household labour supply in five European countries representative of different economies and welfare policy regimes: Denmark, Italy, Norway, Portugal and United Kingdom. We then simulate, under the constraint of constant total net tax revenue,...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and adopt a generalised version of Roemer's (1998) Equality of Opportunity (EOp) framework for analysing optimal income taxation. EOp optimal tax rules seek to equalise income differentials arising from factors beyond the control of the individual....

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and adopt a generalised version of Roemer's (1998) Equality of Opportunity (EOp) framework, which we call extended EOp, for analysing second-best optimal income taxation. Unlike the pure EOp criterion of Roemer (1998) the extended EOp criterion allows...

It has been suggested in the literature that taxes and subsidies play an important role in explaining the differences in working hours across countries. In this paper I test whether public programmes for family support play a role in explaining this variation. I analyse two types of policies:...

The purpose of this paper is to present an exercise where we identify optimal income tax rules under the constraint of fixed tax revenue. To this end, we estimate a microeconomic model with 78 parameters that capture heterogeneity in consumption-leisure preferences for singles and couples as...

Most studies on the economic consequences of ageing rely on Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models that account for feedback mechanisms through changes in relative prices, tax bases etc. However, since individual labour supply behaviour is considered to be a key element in CGE-analyses of...