Getting tax and transfer systems to efficiently deliver sufficient revenues to achieve macroeconomic targets, address goals in re-distribution and social welfare, encourage employment, accommodate business-competitiveness concerns and incorporate environmental issues is difficult. In Australia,...

This paper assesses Italy’s 2019 tax and benefit reforms, analyses hypothetical reforms and proposes a reform package that balances goals of reducing poverty, encouraging employment and fiscal sustainability. Using the OECD’s Tax-Benefit and the EUROMOD microsimulation models, it shows that...

Recent debates of basic income (BI) proposals shine a useful spotlight on the challenges that traditional forms of income support are increasingly facing, and highlight gaps in social provisions that largely depend on income or employment status. A universal “no questions asked” public...

This paper examines the redistributive impact of fiscal policy for Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru and South Africa using comparable fiscal incidence analysis with data from around 2010. The largest redistributive effect is in South Africa and the smallest in Indonesia. Success...

This paper examines the digital divide in internet use in general and whether there may be digital divides in internet use for specific purposes (leisure, improving human capital and obtaining goods and services). It uses a unique dataset which covers the entire clickstream of almost 20,000...

The System of National Accounts, which provides information on important macroeconomic indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), household disposable income and final consumption, typically excludes the value of unpaid household activities. Exceptions are made for the production of goods...

Extensive structural reforms since the early 1990s have strengthened the resilience of the Swedish economy to shocks. However, more needs to be done to better manage near-term risks and ensure that growth remains sustainable in the longer run. Reforming the housing market would reduce the risks...

To gain a better understanding of the financial sustainability of health systems, the OECD has produced a new set of health spending projections up to 2030 for all its member countries. Estimates are produced across a range of policy situations. Policy situations analysed include a “base”...

In 2018, the Inter-American Development Bank and the OECD launched a survey to collect information on key health systems characteristics in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. This paper presents the information provided by 21 of these countries. It describes country-specific...