The welfare state was created after 1950 with counterproductive mechanisms and this caused high inflation and high unemployment and stagnating growth by 1970, called stagflation. Since 1970 governments redressed the welfare state but did not succeed in finding workable mechanisms. They rather...

(1) The basic problem in OECD countries is the tax void. (2) A tax system with an exemption is more transparant than a system with a tax credit. (3) Exemption should be at the level of the net minimum wage so that such workers can work at net = gross. (4) A tax credit is a sufficient but not a...

Unlike aversion to inequality, aversion to poverty resists formalization in welfare economics. One way to assign normative significance to the poverty line is to allow the welfare measure to exhibit a discrete loss from poverty (DLP) at z. However, the resulting redistribution scheme prioritizes...

This note is motivated by recent arguments made by Martin Feldstein in which the relevance of inequality is dismissed (if everybody's income goes up, who cares if inequality is up too?), and the argument is made that only poverty alleviation should matter. This note shows that we all do care...

I use a dynamic microsimulation model to analyse the distributional effects of an expansion of education in Côte d'Ivoire in the medium and long term. The simulations are performed in order to replicate several policies in force or subject to debate in this country. Various hypotheses...

This paper shows the differences between how benefits are estimated and how they are distributed, calls attention to the policy variables that are crucial in explaining certain distributional outcomes, explores the importance of looking at the demand for characteristics when trying to benefit...

The author argues that conversion of over 1 million hectares of customary land to leasehold land tenure merely endowed the elite with excessive landholdings they did not fully utilise for tobacco production because it exceeded the requirement for production of the quota of tobacco output...

The purpose of this paper will be to study the evolution of inequality and poverty in Uruguay between 1989 and 1997. We found that from 1991 there was an increase wage inequality in Uruguay and poverty changed little, decreased until 1993 and then increased and deprivation increased. Near a half...

Using PSID data for the years 1984 to 1999, we estimate the level and severity of asset poverty. Our results indicate that the share of asset- poor households remained almost the same and the severity of poverty increased during this period, despite the growth in the economy and the financial...