We study the link between tax progressivity and top income shares. Using variation from large-scale Western tax reforms in the 1980s and 1990s and the novel synthetic control method, we find large and lasting boosting impacts on top income shares from the progressivity reductions. Effects are...

This paper uses microdata to look at stylised facts of EU-wide income inequality during the 2006-2013 period. Our contribution is to bring together four elements of the analysis that has appeared only in separation so far. Our analysis is EU-wide, but regionally detailed, looks at the longeset...

This paper uses European micro-data to look at stylised facts of EU-wide income inequality during the 2006-2013 period. Our contribution is to bring together four elements of the analysis that has appeared only in separation so far. Our analysis is EU-wide, but regionally detailed, looks at the...

We study the link between tax progressivity and top income shares. Using variation from large-scale Western tax reforms in the 1980s and 1990s and the novel synthetic control method, we find large and lasting boosting impacts on top income shares from the progressivity reductions. Effects are...

This paper uses microdata to look at stylised facts of EU-wide income inequality during the 2006-2013 period. Our contribution is to bring together four elements of the analysis that has appeared only in separation so far. Our analysis is EU-wide, but regionally detailed, looks at the longeset...

This paper proposes a theoretical framework of the factors affecting the gap between the rich and the poor in the European Union, and utilizes a twelve-year panel (2000-2012) of 27 countries to identify the short-term effects of the macroeconomic performance, the level of household income...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), it is shown that income comparisons with persons who are better off has a clear impact on the job satisfaction of West German full-time employees. Two contrary effects can be identified. On the one hand, there is an aversion to...

New analyses of personal income distribution in Germany, based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), show that real market income in private households rose significantly from 2005 to 2010. An increase in real disposable income was also observed. At the same time, income...

We review the survey and experimental findings in the literature on attitudes to income inequality. We interpret the latter as any disparity in incomes between individuals. We classify these findings into two broad types of individual attitudes towards the income distribution in a society: the...

The Gini coefficient or index is perhaps one of the most used indicators of social and economic conditions. In this paper we characterize the Gini index as the unique function that satisfies the properties of scale invariance, symmetry, proportionality and convexity in similar rankings....