Of the world’s 6.7 billion people (as of 2008), 1.3 billion lived on less than $1.25 Purchasing Power Parity dollars per person per day and another 1.7 billion lived on between $1.25 and $2.50 PPP dollars (Chen and Ravallion, 2012). The scourge of absolute economic misery among billions of the...

We study work effort with its various determinants such as the educational level of the worker, the minimum or start-up salary as well as the initial endowment of the worker. By means of optimization we find that optimal work effort depends directly on the initial income available to the worker,...

This study measures the impact of changes in the income determinants on inequality in the 1990 to 2003 period, in order to answer the question of why income distribution as a whole has not changed. The methodology utilized are micro-simulations of income distribution, which is the most...

In the Latin American context, Chile has the highest level of per capita income and the human development index, though the distribution of income is quite unequal. Unlike Uruguay, Chile has one of the more unequal income distributions of the region. In 2003, Chile had Gini Coefficient of 8.5...

We study the effect of a household subsidy to induce the adoption of more efficient and less polluting wood combustion technologies. We compare, through numerical simulations, several subsidy designs with respect to the impact on aggregate emissions, costs, and cost-effectiveness indicators. Two...

Mit der bundesweiten Einführung des Elterngeldes für Geburten ab dem 1.1.2007 wurde das Erziehungsgeld abgelöst. An die Stelle eines Transfers, der nach Prüfung der Bedürftigkeit gezahlt wurde, trat eine Einkommensersatzleistung. Zudem wurde die Bezugsdauer von maximal zwei Jahren auf in...

This paper investigates the relationship between the magnitude of automatic stabilizers in the tax and transfer systems of 19 EU countries and the US, and discretionary fiscal stimulus packages passed by these countries during the recent economic crisis. In particular, we ask whether countries...

This note examines the balance of activation strategies in OECD countries, where this type of policy approach has a long tradition. Countries share the objective of strengthening employment and reducing benefit dependency and vulnerability among the working-age population, but the balance of...

The aim of this paper is to construct a multidimensional poverty indicator, to detect the main poverty risk focuses in Spain. The indicator, which has been developed through a second-order factor analysis, consists of an objective and a subjective part, which incorporate various dimensions such...

The aim of this study is to present the most important factors that explain multidimensional poverty in Spain, highlighting the relationships between the explanatory elements themselves in the spirit of enhancing the effects of poverty policy. For this purpose, we have designed a Structural...