This paper estimates the welfare and distributional impact of two types of welfare reform in the 15 (pre-enlargement) member countries of the European Union. The reforms are revenue neutral and financed by an overall and uniform increase in marginal tax rates on earnings. The first reform...

In spite of there being few elements of tax or cash benefit systems in developed countries that are any longer explicitly gender-biased in a discriminatory sense, it is well recognised that they have significant gender effects. To the extent that women earn less than men on average under...

Using evidence from the European Community Household Panel we find that family benefits vary in their importance to household incomes and in the prevention of child poverty across Europe. In one group of countries family benefits appear to have a significant effect on the protection of children...

Inflation can alter the characteristics of tax- and contribution systems in numerous ways. This paper demonstrates how inflation alters the distributive properties of nominally defined tax systems and looks at the impact of the tax revenues and social insurance contribution receipts generated....

This paper estimates the welfare and distributional impact of two types of welfare reform in 14 member countries of the European Union. The reforms are revenue neutral and ?nanced by an overall and uniform increase in marginal tax rates on earnings. The ?rst reform distributes the additional tax...

Macro-based summary indicators of effective tax burdens cannot provide information on the level or distribution of the marginal effective tax rates thought to influence household behaviour. They also do not capture differences in effective tax rates facing different subgroups of the population....

Computing the tax-benefit position of similar typical households across countries is a method widely used in comparative fiscal- and social policy research. These calculations provide convenient summary pictures of certain aspects of tax-benefit systems. They can, however, be seriously...

This paper introduces a generalised model building platform (MMEANS) for implementing and using tax-benefit microsimulation models. It is designed to aid in the construction of single- and multi-country tax-benefit models by providing all essential components and a system by which these can be...

In spite of there being few elements of tax or cash benefit systems in developed countries that are any longer explicitly gender-biased in a discriminatory sense, it is well recognised that they have significant gender effects. To the extent that women earn less than men on average under...