When measuring inequality, value judgements are imposed, often implicitly, at several stages. In particular, the choice of ‘welfare metric’, adult equivalence scale, unit of analysis and the inequality measure itself cannot avoid value judgements. This paper illustrates the effects of using...

This paper examines the potential distributional impacts of demographic change, particularly population ageing, and changes to labour force participation that are projected to arise over the next 50 years. The approach involves calibration weighting of the Treasury’s microsimulation model,...

This paper illustrates the effects of using different distributions and summary measures, using New Zealand data for the period 2007 to 2011. Using an annual accounting period, alternative welfare metrics and units of analysis are investigated. In addition, the sensitivity to assumptions about...

This paper examines the computation of exact welfare measures in the context of labour supply models. It is suggested that the standard method of computing compensating and equivalent variations does not allow sufficiently for the nonlinearity of the budget constraint. An exact method is...

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the welfare effects of several indirect tax reforms in Australia. The welfare changes are measured in terms of equivalent variations and equivalent incomes, using estimates of the linear expenditure system for each of a range of income groups. The...

This paper examines the Gini-based method of decomposing the redistributive effect of taxation into vertical, horizontal, and reranking components. The consequences of different bandwidth choices, used to identify close-equals groups to estimate the horizontal effect, are discussed. Two opposing...