Taxation data have been used to create long-run series for the distribution of top incomes in quite a number of countries. Most of these studies have focused on the national experience of individual countries, but we can also learn from cross-country comparisons. Comparative analysis is...

Introduction: Measuring Tax Progression -- Theories: Local Measures -- Global Measures -- Uniform Measures -- Applications: Data and Fiscal Institutions of the Surveyed Countries -- Numerical Results -- Statistical Tests -- Progression Intensity

In a number of high-income countries over the past few decades there has been a large growth in income inequality and at the same time a shift in the burden of taxation from the top to the middle of the income distribution. This paper applies the theory of optimal piecewise linear taxation to...