Since the fiscal reforms from the mid 90's, the fiscal policy is less re-distributive. The generosity of the social benefits and the progressivity in taxes is less each time, especially in developed economies. The objectives have moved towards fiscal balance, the dispersion of the risks caused...

The paper attempts to quantify the degree of inequality of opportunity in labor market outcomes for a selection of countries in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region. It adapts the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) methodology that has been widely used to study opportunities of children to...

A general equilibrium model featuring multiple realistic sources of financial frictions is developed to study how different constraints interact in equilibrium. We highlight, distinguish, and evaluate their differential impacts and rich interactions. The economic impact of financial inclusion...

We report results from our long-standing research partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. We make two primary contributions. First, we illustrate the wide range of informative analyses that can be conducted using a state longitudinal data system and...

In 2009, the Brazilian public sector — actually, the Union: including states, municipalities and the Federal District — collected approximately 35 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in taxes, and ‘gave back' around 15 per cent in pension and health benefits to the private sector...

We study the extent to which people are misinformed about their relative position in the income distribution and the effects on preferences for redistribution of correcting faulty beliefs. We implement a tailor-made survey in Sweden and document that a vast majority of Swedes believe that they...

In a recent article, Nowak-Lehmann, Dreher, Herzer, Klasen, and Martínez-Zarzoso (2012) (henceforth NDHKM) conclude that foreign aid has not had a significant effect on income, based on evidence from panel data potentially covering 131 countries over the period 1960-2006. The present study...

Can we expect shocks in trade openness to affect the quality of the domestic political process, and in what way? Isolating cross-country heterogeneity in the distributional effects of trade shocks for different relative factor endowments as a critical element for theory development, the paper...

This article addresses conceptual issues concerning the distributive incidence of public goods. Solutions depend on the specific purposes for asking the question of distributive incidence notably, assessing the extent to which various public goods should be provided, determining how the...

We take advantage of our longitudinal data to explore individual variation in the parameters of individual earnings functions. (1) For this purpose we fit an earnings function to each of the individual histories in the sample.(2) We then try to ascertain the extent to which the estimated...