Micro data from audited tax returns are used to evaluate changes in the actual progressivity of U.S. federal income taxes in 1979 and 1988, which is distinct from apparent progressivity. Statistical inference methods are applied to global measures of both actual and apparent residual and...

Long term measures of income inequality must grapple with the challenges presented by incomplete historical records. In this paper we examine one such problem affecting the quality of federal income tax return data in the period between the two World Wars, which form the basis for the widely...

Many advanced economies have recently embarked on fiscal austerity. As this has come at a time of high and rising income disparities, policy-makers have fretted about the inequality effects of fiscal consolidations. We shed new light on this issue by empirically investigating the (composition)...