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

The paper challenges the widespread view that Bismarckian countries with a strong role of social insurance and labor market regulation are less successful than other employment regimes and hard to reforms. This has been true about a decade ago. But both the institutional set-up and the...

Many nations are seeking to reform their welfare states so that costs to the government can be reduced and the quality of outcomes improved. As a potential way to achieve these aims, there has been a surge of interest in the Singaporean model which features compulsory savings accounts and...

Policy advice can help political actors design and implement institutional reforms through the generation of political and substantial legitimacy. This article clarifies the institutional pre-conditions of effective supply and transfer of policy advice with particular respect to the field of...

We consider the aggregate and distributional impact of Universal Basic Income (UBI). We develop a model to study a wide range of UBI programs and financing schemes and to highlight the key mechanisms behind their impact. The most crucial channel is the rise in distortionary taxation (required to...

We compare two systems of income redistribution: unemployment benefits (UB) and basic income (BI). First, for a simple utility function, with both intensive and extensive margins, the unemployed are likely better off with pure BI than pure UB, regardless of labour supply elasticity and wage...

How are hourly wages affected by the Earned Income Tax Credit? Using variation in state EITC supplements, I find that a 10 percent increase in the generosity of the EITC is associated with a 5 percent fall in the wages of high school dropouts and a 2 percent fall in the wages of those with only...

This paper investigates labor supply and redistributive effects of in-work benefits for Italian married couples using a tax-benefit microsimulation model and a multi-sectoral discrete choice model of labor supply. We consider two in-work benefit schemes following the key principles of the Earned...

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the largest anti-poverty program in the U.S. In 1993, the EITC benefit levels were changed significantly based on the number of children in the family such that families with two or more children experienced an exogenous expansion in their incomes. Using...

Almost all OECD countries operate comprehensive minimum-income programmes for working-age individuals, either as last-resort safety nets alongside primary income replacement benefits, or as the principal instrument for delivering social protection. Such safety-net benefits aim primarily at...