In most developed countries, economies are facing population ageing, falling fertility rates and stagnating labour force participation. The ability of governments to fund future pension and health-care expenditure relies to a large extent on income tax and social security receipts from workers....

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 assumption that household income is strongly and positively correlated with a household's real standard of living provides the basis for the joint taxation of families, which has the effect of discriminating against married women as second earners. This paper shows, in the context of a model...

In 2007, a tax discount reform in Sweden reduced prices of outsourced domestic services (ODS) by 50 percent. Unlike most previous studies, population register data enable us to directly link a proxy for relaxed time constraints, annual changes in households' tax discounts, to changes in...

The gender wage gap and the gender work gap are sizable, persistent and well documented for many countries. The result of the gender wage and gender work gap combined is an income gap between men and women. A small literature has begun to examine how the tax-benefit system contributes to closing...

We study the effect of state-level estate taxes on the geographical location of the Forbes 400 richest Americans and its implications for tax policy. We use a change in federal tax law to identify the tax sensitivity of the ultra-wealthy's locational choices. Before 2001, some states had an...

We test the hypothesis that local government officials in jurisdictions that have higher local sales taxes are more likely to use fiscal zoning to attract retailing. We find that total retail employment is not significantly affected by local sales tax rates, but employment in big box and anchor...

Rising government debt levels around the world are raising the specter that authorities might seek to inflate away the debt. In theoretical settings where fiscal policy "dominates" monetary policy, higher debt without offsetting changes in primary surpluses should lead households to anticipate...

This paper examines the impact on inequality and poverty of the economic crisis in four European countries, namely France, Germany, the UK and Ireland, and the contribution of tax and benefit policy changes. The period examined, 2008 to 2010, was one of great economic turmoil, yet it is unclear...