The conventional menu cost framework performs poorly with realistic labour supply elasticities: the menu costs required for price rigidity are very high and the welfare consequences of monetary disturbances are negligible. We show that the presence of dual labour markets greatly improves the...

This paper presents an evaluation of the tax-transfer treatment of married couples in 15 EU countries using the EUROMOD microsimulation model. First, we show that many tax-transfer schemes in Europe feature negative jointness defined as a situation where the tax rate on one person depends...

This paper estimates the welfare and distributional impact of two types of welfare reform in the 15 (pre-enlargement) member countries of the European Union. The reforms are revenue neutral and financed by an overall and uniform increase in marginal tax rates on earnings. The first reform...