This paper reviews various techniques for quantifying financial incentives to work, shows how financial work incentives have changed across the population since 1979, and estimates how much of these changes are due to changes in the tax and benefit system.

Optimal tax rules are used to evaluate the optimality of taxation for lone mothers in Germany and Britain. The theoretical model is combined with elasticities derived from the structural estimation of lone mothers' labour supply. For both countries we do not find that in-work credits with...

This paper reviews various techniques for quantifying financial incentives to work, shows how financial work incentives have changed across the population since 1979, and estimates how much of these changes are due to changes in the tax and benefit system.