This paper focuses is on the potential role that taxation and public expenditure policies play in general in affecting income distribution. We find that progressive personal income taxes and corporate income taxes reduce income inequality. However, the effect of corporate income taxes seems to...

The main focus of this paper is on the potential role that taxation and public expenditure policies play in general in affecting income distribution. We find that progressive personal income taxes and corporate income taxes reduce income inequality. The effect of corporate income taxes seems to...

We quantitatively analyze the way inflation alters the inequality of the income distribution in the U.S. economy. The main mechanism emphasized in this paper is the "bracket creep" effect according to which inflation pushes income into higher tax brackets. Governments adjust the nominal income...

What shapes the optimal degree of progressivity of the tax and transfer system? On the one hand, a progressive tax system can counteract inequality in initial conditions and substitute for imperfect private insurance against idiosyncratic earnings risk. At the same time, progressivity reduces...

This paper studies the redistributive and revenue effects of bracket creep in Germany under various inflation scenarios and evaluates the feasibility to charge a rich tax to fight bracket creep for the income distribution in 2009. Using a tax micro-simulation model developed for the newly...

Using German income distribution in 2009, this paper studies the redistributive and revenue effects of bracket creep under various inflation scenarios. We develop a tax micro-simulation model for the newly available Panel on Household Finance (PHF) data. The simulation yields an inverted...