We assess the labour supply effects of two ‘making work pay' reforms in Germany. We provide evidence in favour of policies that distinguish between low effort and low productivity by targeting individuals with low wages rather than individuals with low earnings. In assessing the policies we...

Social assistance and inactivity traps have long been considered amongst the main causes of the poor employment performance of EU countries. The success of New Labour has triggered a growing interest in instruments capable of combining the promotion of responsibility and self-sufficiency with...

The Belgian “Generations Pact” contained a measure which aims at removing an inactivity trap for people who benefit from a survivor pension. In this paper we use a sample of administrative data from the “Datawarehouse labour market and social protection” and the microsimulation model...

We analyse the distributional impact of lowering social security contributions and compensating the revenue loss by an increase in indirect taxes. We empirically assess the distributional consequences of this shift by using two Belgian microsimulation models: MODÉTÉ for the tax benefit system,...

In this paper we use a sample of administrative data coming from the `Dataware-house labour market and social protection' and the microsimulation model MIMOSIS to assess the labour supply effects of a reform of the rules for cumulating labour income with survival pension as proposed in the...

The adverse distributional effects of a flat tax are well known and have been documented by empirical research in several countries, including Belgium. Advocates of the flat tax argue, correctly, that these studies do not take into account agents’ behavioural reactions and possible feed back...

During the last decade, several EU countries have tried to tackle unemployment and low activity rates through extensive tax cuts. In an effort to encourage the taking up of work – especially amongst the less productive workers – policymakers have shown increasing interest in targeted tax and...

Marcella Corsi and Kristian Orsini analyse poverty levels in six European countries: Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. They focus on child poverty, taking into account differences in demographic structure, actual redistribution policies towards younger...