There is a growing momentum to base the poverty line on total consumption expenditure as it is a better measure of welfare. This chapter explores three related approaches to measuring household welfare that together represent an alternative ‘inductive’ measuring approach. We focus on...

The paper provides a rigorous derivation of the "welfare triangle approximation" (WTA), which is at the center of cost benefit analysis. The result is generalized by showing that the WTA is one of two dual expressions, one of which approximates the change in real consumption, the other the...

This paper documents the integration of microsimulation tools for direct taxation, indirect taxation, and social benefits in the context of the European tax and benefit simulator, EUROMOD. Integration has been developed parallely for the two countries, Belgium and Germany. The paper at hand...

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...