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...

We assess the effects of U.S. tax policy reforms on inequality by applying a new decomposition method that allows us to disentangle mechanical effects due to changes in pre-tax incomes from direct effects of policy reforms. While tax reforms implemented under Democrat administrations, in...

The present paper aims at contributing to the literature on children welfare evaluation by taking into account for intra-household distribution of resources and, as a consequence, intra-household inequality. This task cannot be accomplished within the standard framework of unitary model of...

The possible implications of using the family as opposed to the individual as the unit of taxation are not clear. This applies both to work incentives and distributional outcomes. In this paper we evaluate the effects of a hypothetical reform for Italian income taxation with respect to labour...

During the last 20 years, microsimulation models have been increasingly applied in qualitative and quantitative analysis of public policies. This paper discusses microsimulation techniques and their theoretical background as a tool for the analysis of public policies. It next analyses basic...

Minimum income policies are policies aimed at guarantee all citizens with a minimum level of income and at fighting social exclusion typically associated with extreme poverty. Theoretically, their main shortcoming is the disincentive effect on labour market participation they could generate in...

This study proposes a novel approach for estimating the rules governing the distribution of resources among wife, husband and children, using a complete collective demand system with individual Engel effects. The model contributes to the literature by explicitly modeling intrahousehold...

Individual income is determined by free-will actions related to the level of effort exerted and by opportunities determined by aspects beyond the individual's control, such as family background, race, place of birth or health endowments. Taking human capital as the main engine of development, we...

The aim of this paper is twofold: a) To explore the evolution of occupational segregation of women and men of different racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. during the period 1940-2010; and b) to assess the consequences of segregation for each of them. For that purpose, this paper proposes a simple...

The assessment of income inequality can be investigated looking at the solution concepts of the cooperative game theory. We propose a multi-factorial decomposition of the Atkinson index by income sources and evaluate it as a cooperative game of the social cost of inequality. This framework...