At the end of the 1970s there appeared to be wide agreement as to the desirability of switching the burden of taxation away from direct taxes towards indirect taxes. In concrete terms, there was strong pressure for cuts in income taxation to be financed, where necessary, by a rise in the rate of...

In recent years the welfare state has come under attack from economists, and in many OECD countries there have been calls for spending on the welfare state to be rolled back. Critics argue that the size of transfer programs is responsible for a decline in economic performance and that cuts in...

A rapidly growing area of economic research investigates the top of the income distribution using data from income tax records. This volume brings together studies of top incomes for twelve countries from around the world, including China, India, Japan, Argentina and Indonesia. Together with the...

Based on a pioneering research programme on the evolution of top incomes, this volume brings together studies from 10 OECD countries. This rapidly growing field of economic research investigates the top segment of the income distribution by using data from income tax records over the past...

In this first lecture in honour of Amartya Sen, I examine the lessons that can be drawn from <italic>The Idea of Justice</italic> for public economics and the extent to which public economics has already moved in the direction advocated by Sen. More specifically, I focus on the current fiscal austerity...

This paper takes income distribution as a case study of the role of data in economics. After describing the transformation which has taken place with regard to the availability of data on income inequality, it discusses how the comparability of these estimates is brought into question by...