Many distribution models that are workhorses for tax policy, and more broadly for research on immobility and inequality, are insufficient welfare measures of either the status quo or policy proposals. This paper explores two fundamental modeling problems: The omission of corporate income, and...

Carbon pricing is the efficient instrument to reduce emissions. Nevertheless, the geographical and sectoral coverage of substantial carbon pricing remains low, often due to concerns that it may increase economic inequality. Regulatory standards such as fuel economy standards are more popular....

Traditional analyses of redistributive effects of the tax-benefit system are rooted in the concepts of relative income inequality and proportionality. This observation also applies to decompositions proposed by Kakwani (1977, 1984) and Lambert (1985) that reveal the vertical and horizontal...

If the U.S. should limit carbon dioxide emissions, an allowance trading policy may offer one method of achieving that goal in a cost-effective manner. The distributional effects of such a program could be large, far in excess of the actual cost to the economy. This paper examines how two key...

The income tax taxes the proceeds from market work, but not the proceeds from time otherwise allocated - whether enjoyed as self-provided goods and services or leisure time per se. A two-earner couple that out-sources household and child care services, for instance, pays for these services with...

The Brazilian government raises taxes amounting to 35% of GDP and spends more than two thirds of this on social programmes. These shares are in pair with the OECD averages and well in excess of Latin America averages. However, while tax-benefit systems in most OECD countries reduce income...

While a carbon tax is widely acknowledged as an efficient policy to mitigate climate change, adoption has lagged. Part of the challenge resides in the distributional implications of a carbon tax and a belief that it tends to be regressive. Even when not regressive, poor households could be hurt...

Carbon pricing is the efficient instrument to reduce emissions. However, the geographical and sectoral coverage of substantial carbon pricing is low, often due to concerns that pricing may increase economic inequality. Regulatory standards such as fuel economy standards are more popular. But do...

This paper presents empirical evidence on the distributional impact of public higher edu- cation through analysis of a cross-sectional view of West Germany in 1997. In contrast to a widely-held hypothesis in economics, our findings do not show evidence for a regressive im- pact. The use of a...