This paper aims to analyse the social assistance systems in five South European countries: France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. After reviewing the existing system of social assistance in each country, we apply a consistent methodology in order to estimate its impact on income...

In empirical analysis, the Kakwani index is the most frequently used indicator for comparing progressivity across countries and over time. The Kakwani is often assumed to measure to what extent a policy design is targeted to the poor. It has, however, a major drawback: it is not defined for net...

By the mid-1990s the potential and usefulness of microsimulation models for researching tax-benefit systems had found widespread acceptance. Nevertheless, models were not widely available for independent or academic research in all countries of the European Union (EU). Even more important,...

This paper develops a tax-benefit microsimulation model for the Italian economy to evaluate the impact of fiscal policy measures on household income. The simulations are performed on a dataset obtained from the matching of IT-SILC 2011 with HBS 2010, SHIW 2010 and IT-SILC 2008 to integrate...