Two traditional options for reforming Ehegattensplitting, the joint taxation of married couples with full income splitting, are de facto income splitting (Realsplitting) or individual taxation with a transferable personal allowance. However, these proposals do not significantly reduce the...

Ein Realsplitting wie bei Geschiedenen oder eine Individualbesteuerung mit übertragbarem Grundfreibetrag sind traditionelle Reformoptionen für das Ehegattensplitting. Ihr Nachteil ist, dass sie die Grenzbelastungen des Einkommens von zweitverdienenden PartnerInnen kaum reduzieren und somit die...

A real-effort experiment is conducted in order to detect preferences for one out of three different models of the Welfare State characterized by different tax-and-transfer schemes. We reproduce a small society in the lab where: Subjects are grouped in three stylized classes (the rich, the middle...

The issue of polarization, as opposed to inequality, has been little explored in European countries. In this paper, using data provided by the Luxembourg Income Studies Database, we look at the trend of income polarization in 12 European countries, the only ones available with two comparable...

This paper aims at examining interpersonal income and consumption inequality within the Attica Metropolitan Region, which includes Athens, the largest metropolis of Greece. It also aims to make comparisons between Attica and the rest of the country. The analysis is based on income and...

European societies have been experiencing growing income and wealth inequalities over the past few decades, and, accordingly, they are a topic of intense discussion. Although the population’s evaluation of inequalities as just or unjust is important for designing social policies, there has...

Subgroup Decomposability is a very useful property in an inequality measure, and level-sensitivity, which requires a given level of inequality to acquire a greater significance the poorer a population is, is a distributionally appealing axiom for an inequality index to satisfy. In this paper,...

World leaders have come to recognise the challenge posed by high and rising economic inequality. This paper asks how Europe can address excessive inequality. It argues that we should learn from the lessons of history; there have been significant periods in the past when inequality fell. We can...

Inequality, bi-polarization and polarization are related but distinct concepts aiming at analysing the income distribution. This paper first recalls the main differences between these three notions of inequality, bipolarization and polarization and then suggests using the so-called Shapley...

Despite the formal rigour that attends social and economic measurement, the substantive meaning of particular measures could be compromised in the absence of a clear and coherent conceptualization of the phenomenon being measured. A case in point is afforded by the status of a "focus-axiom" in...