This paper examines the impact on inequality and poverty of the economic crisis in four European countries, namely France, Germany, the UK and Ireland, and the contribution of tax and benefit policy changes. The period examined, 2008 to 2010, was one of great economic turmoil, yet it is unclear...

Natural experiments provide explicit and robust identifying assumptions for the estimation of treatment effects. Yet their use for policy design is often limited by the difficulty in extrapolating on the basis of reduced-form estimates of policy effects. On the contrary, structural models allow...

The current debt crisis has given rise to a debate about deeper fiscal integration in Europe. The view is widespread that moving towards a ‘fiscal union’ would have a stabilising effect in the event of macroeconomic shocks. In this paper we study the economic effects of introducing...

Subjective wellbeing (SWB) is increasingly used as a way to measure individual wellbeing. Interpreted as "experienced utility", it has been compared to "decision utility" using specific experiments (Kahneman et al., 1997) or stated preferences(Benjamin et al. 2012). We suggest here an original...

Subjective wellâ€being (SWB) is increasingly used as a way to measure individual wellâ€being. Interpreted as “experienced utilityâ€, it has been compared to “decision utility†using specific experiments (Kahneman et al., 1997) or stated preferences (Benjamin et al....

Social assistance and inactivity traps have long been considered amongst the main causes of the poor employment performance of EU countries. The success of New Labour has triggered a growing interests in instruments capable of combining the promotion of responsibility and self-sufficiency with...

Social assistance and inactivity traps have long been considered as one of the main causes of the poor employment performance of EU countries. The success of New Labour in the UK has triggered a growing interests in instruments capable of combining the promotion of responsibility and...

In this paper, we suggest a collective model with parents and (young) children. We identify and estimate scale economies in households and the sharing rule between husband, wife and children. While adult shares and economies of scale are identi?ed thanks to the estimation of individual Engel...

La littérature contient très peu de recherches empiriques concernant les effets distributifs du système sociofiscal à l’intérieur du ménage. Nous simulons cet effet dans le cadre du modèle collectif d’offre de travail lorsque l’on passe d’une taxation jointe à une taxation...

We follow the inverted optimal tax approach to characterize and compare "tax-benefit revealed" social preferences in 17 EU countries and the US. Following Bargain et al. (2013), we invert the optimal income taxation model on the distributions of net and gross incomes and use labor supply...