Contrary to consolidated economic theory principles, in Europe (but also in other world regions), austerity policy has been implemented instead of stimulus measures which have proven to be successful in crisis associated with credit crunch and insufficient demand. These policies cannot be only...

In this paper we propose a framework to study changes in the redistributive consequences of income taxes and transfers. In contrast with previous approaches the new method allows decomposition of the change in the redistributive impact into four components: the immediate effect of changes in the...

A premature death unexpectedly brings a life and a career to their end, leading to substantial welfare losses. We study the retirement decision in an economy with risky lifetime, and compare the laissez-faire with egalitarian social optima. We consider two social objectives: (1) the maximin on...

An essential difference between the design of the Swedish and the US in-work tax credit systems relates to their functional forms. Where the US earned income tax credit (EITC) is phased out and favours low and medium earnings, the Swedish system is not phased out and offers 17 and 7 per cent tax...

In France, each year between 1993 and 2004, 5 to 7% of general practitioners (GPs) earn less than 1.5 times the level of the French minimum wage. This article examines who are those low-income GPs using a representative panel of French self-employed GPs over the years 1993 to 2004. We .nd that...

We examine the effect of commuting on labour supply patterns. A labour supply model is introduced which shows that commuting distance increases daily workhours, whereas the effect on total labour supply is ambiguous. This paper addresses these issues empirically using the socio-economic panel...