This study provides evidence on optimal commodity tax rates in Australia, and on their sensitivity to demand function and demographic specification. The optimal tax algorithm, proposed and used here, allows the social welfare weights to depend on prices, household composition and aggregate...

This paper examines inequality in Australia using four Household Expenditure Surveys (HES) between 1975/76 and 1993/94, from the Australian Burau of Statistics (ABS). The effects on inequality of the choice of welfare variable, equivalence scale and price index are examined.

This paper tests, using data from South Africa and Pakistan, two major implications of the unitary household model, namely, that (a) each individual pools the various components of her/his non labour earnings, and (b) men and women pool their non labour earnings between themselves. The study...

This study analyses and compares child health in Pakistan, Peru, Jamaica, Russia and South Africa. These countries, which are culturally, economically and politically quite diverse, display considerable variation in the state of child and health, and in the nature and magnitude of the effects of...

The unitary household model implies pooling of all individual incomes. This study distinguishes between various types of income pooling and tests them on Australian household income/expenditure data. The tests recognise the endogeneity of both earned and unearned income and are performed using a...

The literature on tax evasion and its implication for optimal tax theory has concentrated on income tax evasion. The issue of commodity tax evasion has received relatively little attention even though it is important in many cases, especially in developing countries. This paper proposes a theory...