The severe economic crisis affecting Greece since 2009 is having an unprecedented impact in terms of job and income losses, and is widely perceived to have a comparably significant effect in terms of greater inequality and increased poverty. We provide an assessment of whether (and to what...

The current Greek crisis and the government's fiscal consolidation effort have elevated tax evasion to one of the most crucial policy issues in the domestic debate. The paper attempts to shed light on one aspect of the phenomenon, namely its distributional implications. We compare a large panel...

The severe economic crisis affecting Greece is widely expected to have a significant social impact in terms of greater inequality and increased poverty. We provide an early assessment of whether (and to what extent) this is the case. More specifically, we distinguish between two inter-related...

Fiscal welfare, i.e. the use of the tax system to achieve social policy goals, is assuming ever greater importance throughout Europe and beyond. In housing, the favourable tax treatment of mortgage interest repayments has often coexisted alongside public programmes of housing benefit or social...

The shadow economy and tax evasion are both widespread in Greece. This has adverse effects in terms of horizontal and vertical equity, as well as in terms of efficiency. We take advantage of access to a large sample of income tax returns in 2004/05, and compare tax reported incomes with those...

The gradualist approach towards an unconditional basic income for all involves the introduction or extension of universal benefits in place of current income-tested ones. Such a policy shift might cause higher fiscal costs or adverse distributional effects, at least in the short run. However,...

Even though tax evasion has been the focus of a growing volume of research in recent years, the issue of its distributional impact is still relatively neglected. This paper is an attempt to analyse empirically the implications of tax evasion in terms of inequality, poverty, redistribution and...

The shadow economy and tax evasion are both widespread in Greece. This has adverse effects in terms of horizontal and vertical equity, as well as in terms of efficiency. We take advantage of access to a large sample of income tax returns in 2004/05, and compare tax reported incomes with those...

This paper attempts to contribute to the analysis of mortgage interest tax relief from the perspective of the economics of social policy. It begins with a brief discussion of fiscal welfare, highlighting key contributions within this particular intellectual tradition. It then contrasts this...

The severe economic crisis affecting Greece is widely expected to have a significant social impact in terms of greater inequality and increased poverty. We provide an early assessment of whether (and to what extent) this is the case. More specifically, we distinguish between two inter-related...