This paper examines the potential distributional impacts of demographic change, particularly population ageing, and changes to labour force participation that are projected to arise over the next 50 years. The approach involves calibration weighting of the Treasury’s microsimulation model,...

This paper illustrates the effects of using different distributions and summary measures, using New Zealand data for the period 2007 to 2011. Using an annual accounting period, alternative welfare metrics and units of analysis are investigated. In addition, the sensitivity to assumptions about...

The aim of this paper is to provide an introduction to the concept of user cost and its determinants. Particular attention is given to the influence of taxation. The concept of user cost relates to the rental, the rate of return to capital, that arises in a profit maximising situation in which...

This paper explores, in the context of the Atkinson inequality measure, attempts to make interpretations of orders of magnitude transparent. One suggestion is that the analogy of sharing a cake among a very small number of people provides a useful intuitive description for people who want some...

The objective of the paper is to explore the saving and consumption responses of a representative household to a range of policy interventions such as changes in taxes and pension settings. To achieve this, it develops a two-period life-cycle model. The representative household maximises...

The empirical literature on the elasticity of taxable income (ETI) sometimes questions whether estimated values are consistent with being on the revenue-increasing section of the Laffer curve, usually in the context of a single rate tax system or for top marginal rates. This paper develops...

This paper provides a technical introduction to the use of the elasticity of taxable income in welfare comparisons and optimal tax discussions. It draws together, using a consistent framework and notation, a number of established results concerning marginal welfare changes and optimal taxes....

This paper examines the extent to which projected aggregate tax revenue changes, in association with population ageing over the next 50 years, can be expected to finance expected increases in social welfare expenditures. It uses projections from two separate models, dealing with social...

This paper considers whether an equivalence scale implicit in transfer policy can be inferred from summary measures of reranking (whereby the rank order of pre-tax incomes is different from that of the post-tax distribution). It is conjectured that, if the government has a distributional...

This paper reports estimates of the potential welfare effects of hypothetical increases in the petrol excise tax in New Zealand. Equivalent variations, for a range of household types and total expenditure levels, are obtained along with distributional measures. Household demand responses are...