Are we better or worse off after the Norwegian tax reform of 1992 and how has the reform influenced the income sizes and the distribution of total income? This question denotes our twofold analysis in this paper. We first examine the trends in average income and income distribution in the period...

The share of pre-tax income flowing to the top of the UK income distribution increased continually and substantially in the three decades leading up to the financial crisis, but has changed little since 2013. Using microdata sampled from UK tax records, we describe the nature of top incomes in...

Over half of the U.S. population receives health insurance through an employer, with employer premium contributions creating a flat "head tax" per worker, independent of their earnings. This paper develops and calibrates a stylized model of the labor market to explore how this uniquely American...

This paper focuses on the measurement of progressivity and the distributional effect of the Norwegian tax reform of 1992. Progressivity is measured by the degree of disproportionality, which implies that the burden of taxes is estimated when income units are ranked according to pre-tax incomes....

"Is inequality largely the result of the Industrial Revolution? Or, were pre-industrial incomes and life expectancies as unequal as they are today? For want of sufficient data, these questions have not yet been answered. This paper infers inequality for 14 ancient, pre-industrial societies using...

"Policymakers and economists disagree about the impact of bank regulations on the distribution of income. Exploiting cross-state and cross-time variation, we test whether liberalizing restrictions on intra-state branching in the United States intensified, ameliorated, or had no effect on income...

"While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, we study whether financial development disproportionately raises the incomes of the poor and alleviates poverty. Using a broad cross-country sample, we distinguish among competing theoretical predictions...