The paper reviews Slovakia''s comprehensive reforms to its taxation and welfare systems in 2004, including the introduction of a flat-rate income tax and single-rate value-added tax (VAT), and linkage of social benefits to participation in labor market programs. Though revenues following the...

The paper provides an analysis and discussion of key structural implications of the 2007 and 2008 welfare and tax reforms in the Czech Republic. Based on a detailed micro-study of marginal and average effective tax rates for individuals at various points along the earnings curve, it concludes...

Analysts agree that raising national saving is one of the key objectives of social security reform in the United States. Hence, to judge the merits of proposals requires a comparison of saving responses. The paper outlines the difficulties involved in making those comparisons, which arise from...

Introduction: the connection between welfare and work -- Welfare reform's context: the growth of the low-wage service sector -- Welfare reform's content: building connections between work and welfare -- Tying the first hand: the solitary wage bargain -- Tying the second hand: challenges to...

Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to...

Main description: The Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow directs his attention here to one of today's most controversial social issues: how to get people off welfare and into jobs. With characteristic eloquence, wit, and rigor, Solow condemns the welfare reforms recently passed by...

We present a combined, consistent microsimulation-AGE model that uses the labour market model PACE-L, data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and a discrete choice labour supply estimation. The model is used to analyse a reform that cuts the social assistance minimum income and lowers the...