What are the effects of austerity on distributional policy? We exploit the autonomy of Italian municipalities in setting non-linear income taxes and the exogenous introduction of a fiscal rule to show that austerity increases tax progressivity. Consistent with this evidence, we find that in a...

There is a great deal of coverage on inequality, and the key determinants of recent trends are increasingly well-documented. However, much less is known about the driving forces behind international differences in inequality. The nine contributions collected in this book set out to examine the...