Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result of differences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that paves the debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, we estimate labor...

By inverting Saez (2002)'s model of optimal income taxation, we characterize the redistributive preferences of the Irish government between 1987 and 2005. The (marginal) social welfare function revealed by this approach is consistently comparable over time and show great stability despite...

This paper analyses the equilibrium dynamics of exploitation and class in general accumulation economies with population growth, technical change, and bargaining by adopting a novel computational approach. First, the determinants of the emergence and persistence of exploitation and class are...

Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result of differences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that paves the debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, we estimate labor...

This paper inverts the usual logic of applied optimal income taxation. It starts from the observed distribution of income before and after redistribution and corresponding marginal tax rates. Under a set of simplifying assumptions, it is then possible to recover the social welfare function that...

Drawing from the formal setting of the optimal tax theory (Mirrlees 1971), the paper identifies the level of Rawlsianism of some European social planners starting from the observation of real data and redistribution systems and uses it to build a metric that allows measuring the degree of...

Most studies show that the present generation has to take the burden and reduce consumption to mitigate future climate change. However, significant climate change is due to a market failure, and corrections of market failures give possibilities of Pareto improvements. In this paper, we study the...

We compare four methodologies to estimate the global distribution of income and find that many methods work well, but the method based on two-parameter distributions is more accurate than other methods. This method is simpler, easier to implement and relies on a more internationally-comparable...

The Netherlands has a unique tradition in which all major Dutch political parties provide CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis with highly detailed proposals for the tax-benefit system in every national election. This information allows us to quantitatively measure the...

The Netherlands has a unique tradition in which all major Dutch political parties provide CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis with highly detailed proposals for the tax benefit system in every national election. This information allows us to quantitatively measure the...