Equivalence scales are a prerequisite for any economic well-being comparison with measures on income distribution, inequality and poverty. This paper provides equivalence scales based on revealed preference consumption microdata for West Germany 1983. It is a part of a joint US and German...

This paper undertakes an assessment of the evolution of inequality in the distribution of consumption expenditure in India over the last quarter-century, from 1983 to 2009-10, employing data available in the quinquennial 'thick' surveys of the National Sample Survey Office. We find that...

We demonstrate that a rank-preserving transfer from a richer individual to a poorer individual can exacerbate income inequality (when inequality is measured by the Gini coefficient). This happens when individuals' preferences depend negatively not only on work time (effort) but also on low...

Microsimulation models allow targeted simulations to analyze the impacts of alternative policies, measures, scenarios based on microunits like persons, families, households, firms etc. Meanwhile it is out of question that microsimulation models are a helpful, successful and an imperative...

In “A Critical Look at the Economic Argument for Taxing Only Labor Income,” I challenge the tax substitution argument, which according to accepted wisdom fairly establishes that it is best to tax only labor earnings. A portion of Critical Look is directed at Professors Bankman and Weisbach's...

I study a problem of repeated moral hazard in which the effect of effort is persistent over time: each period's outcome distribution is a function of a geometrically distributed lag of past efforts. I show that when the utility of the agent is linear in effort, a simple rearrangement of terms in...

We demonstrate that a rank-preserving transfer from a richer individual to a poorer individual can exacerbate income inequality (when inequality is measured by the Gini coefficient). This happens when individuals' preferences depend negatively not only on work time (effort) but also on low...

The European Union is legally entitled to the revenue from (1) agricultural and sugar levies, (2) customs duties, (3) a 1 percent rate on each Member States' value added tax base, and (4) a resource on the basis of GNP. Currently, the Union is actively involved in the search for a fifth own...

Equivalence scales are a prerequisite for any economic well-being comparison with measures on income distribution, inequality and poverty. This paper provides equivalence scales based on revealed preference consumption microdata for West Germany 1983. It is a part of a joint US and German...

Widening economic inequality is fast becoming the defining social problem of this era. Although there are a number of policy mechanisms available for addressing the problem, taxation is the first and best tool for the job. The federal income tax code is already moderately progressive and thus...