We study an Agent-based model of household-bank relationships where households borrow for the purpose of consumption. Desired consumption is driven by households disposable income as well as a social norm of consumption. If households care about their relative position in the economy (i.e. want...

In this chapter, William Scarth examines the relationship between population aging, productivity and growth in living standards and reaches a more optimistic conclusion about the effects of aging on productivity. Indeed, he finding that aging may in fact lead to increases in productivity, even...

This paper simulates the distributional impact of the Russian personal income tax (PIT) following the flat tax reform of 2001 using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. I decompose the change in the distribution of net income into a direct (tax) effect and an indirect effect....

Consumption taxes are often considered as the most anti-redistributive component of the tax system. Yet, very few estimates, and fewer international comparisons of the redistributive impact of consumption taxes exist in the literature, due to scarce data on household expenditures. We use...