The distributional characteristic is a measure which can be used in many applications in social cost-benefit analysis. In the application here, the distributional characteristics of a number of broad aggregates of goods are calculated for Ireland. These calculations can aid in assessing the...

To combat growing levels of obesity, health related taxes have been suggested with taxes on foods high in fat or sugar. Such taxes have been criticised on the basis of their regressivity and potentially adverse impact upon poverty. This paper analyses the effect of such taxes on a range of...

The composition of tax revenue in Ireland had changed dramatically over the past decade, with indirect taxes accounting for a large share of total tax revenue. This shift towards indirect taxation more than direct taxation tends to put excessive burden on the poor, thereby raising the concern...

Despite the recent and intense debate on how to define and measure pro-poor growth, there is one important issue which has so far not received sufficient attention: how applications of pro-poor growth measurements can appropriately take into account relative price changes, which, given the...

Modern macroeconomics empirically addresses economy-wide incentives behind economic actions by using insights from the way a single representative household would behave. This analytical approach requires that incentives of the poor and the rich are strictly aligned. In empirical analysis a...

This study investigates the pattern of poverty in Italy in the 1980s and the 1990s, by means of both eonsumption and ineome measures, so as to separate the permanent and temporary eomponents. The empirie al analysis we eonduet addresses not only eeonomie issues, but also those of survey...

Many low income countries are experiencing a 'nutrition transition' towards the consumption of more energy-dense, highly processed foods and beverages that are often high in caloric sweeteners, fat and salt. Changing lifestyles and urbanisation have coincided with a 'retail revolution', a rapid...

Resource shares, defined as the fraction of total household spending going to each person in a household, are important for assessing individual material well-being, inequality and poverty. They are difficult to identify because consumption is measured typically at the household level, and many...