This paper applies multidimensional affluence measures to a new dataset on income and wealth in 15 Eurozone countries. We start our analysis by examining the income and wealth distributions separately for each country, and extend it to a multidimensional setting by considering the joint...

This paper examines capital buffer fluctuations over the business cycle and provides empirical evidence on determinants of capital buffers for the banking sectors of 13 Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period 2001–2012. Results indicate that there is a negative and significant...

In this paper, we describe richness, a Stata program for the calculation of richness indices. Peichl, Schaefer, and Scheicher (2007) propose a new class of richness measures to contribute to the debate how to deal with the financing problems that European welfare states face as a result of...

Recent success of the flat income tax in Eastern Europe raises questions about whether there is scope for such a policy reform in Western Europe as well. We address this by estimating the potential distributional impact of various flat taxes for selected Western European countries. Our...

This article investigates the impact of tax simplification on various indicators of the efficiency of the tax system and on the distribution of income. The analysis is based on a simulation model (FiFoSiM) using German income tax and household survey microdata. We model tax simplification as the...

The aim of this paper is to describe the state-of-the-art in simulation and to illustrate benefits and problems of linking micro and macro models by analysing flat tax proposals for Germany. The analysis shows that a personal income flat tax can indeed overcome the fundamental equity efficiency...

The flat income tax has become increasingly popular recently, yet its implementation is limited to Eastern Europe. We analyse the distributional and efficiency e¤ects of flat tax scenarios for Western European countries. Our simulations show that flat tax rates required to attain revenue...

Following the report of the Stiglitz Commission, measuring and comparing well-being across countries has gained renewed interest. Yet, analyses that go beyond income and incorporate non-market dimensions of welfare most often rely on the assumption of identical preferences to avoid the...