ubsidizing fossil fuel consumption is at odds with climate change mitigation and a heavy burden on public budgets. Yet, efforts to reform such subsidies often face strong public opposition. We examine whether informing citizens about the effects of fossil fuel subsidy reform (FFSR) and...

Using a fixed-effects panel threshold regression with Driscoll-Kraay inference, this paper examines how institutional quality shapes the distributional effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the ASEAN-5 economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) over...

This study evaluates the incidence of food and non-food social programs in function of income inequality in households in Peru during 2022-2024 in a context of persistent distributive gaps, despite social interventions aimed at promoting equity. Data from the National Household Survey (ENAHO)...

This report provides an up-to-date assessment of the scale and distributional impact of tax relief on public, occupational, and private pension contributions in Ireland. Using SWITCH, the ESRI's tax-benefit microsimulation model, we quantify the cost of tax relief under the current...

This paper analyses how UK tax-benefit policies shaped poverty, inequality, and living standards between 2019 and 2023, spanning the COVID-19 shock and the subsequent cost-of-living crisis. Using the UKMOD tax-benefit microsimulation model combined with imputed household consumption data, we...

There has been considerable recent debate about the terms of 'Plan 2' student loans, which were issued to 11 cohorts of English undergraduate university students: those who started their courses between academic years 2012/13 and 2022/23.1 We have written before about how these student loans...

We provide new evidence on the effects of fiscal consolidation measures on output, unemployment, income inequality and consumer price inflation. To identify causal impacts, we use a narrative-based instrumental variable strategy drawing on historical records of exogenous fiscal changes motivated...

We study the distributional effects of remote learning using a novel approach combining preference data from a conjoint survey with administrative records. Experimentally derived preferences account for selection into remote learning and treatment effect heterogeneity. We validate the approach...

This paper quantifies the relationship between economic exposure to climate policies and climate policy support. We develop a stylised theoretical model to decompose exposure through income, energy spending and vehicle use, and define consistent measures of these exposure channels. We then...

This paper analyzes the redistributive effects of inflation across 18 European economies from 2021:Q3 to 2022:Q2, using unique micro-datasets for this country sample. We estimate inflation’s impact on household welfare through the consumption basket, income, and wealth channels. Our main...

We characterize optimal climate policy in an economy with heterogeneous households and non-homothetic preferences. We focus on constrained efficiency, where the planner is restricted from transferring resources across households. We derive three results. First, the constrained-optimal carbon tax...

Improving domestic revenue mobilization extremely important for Zimbabwe to create the fiscal space to absorb quasi-fiscal expenditures and support macroeconomic stability. In November 2023, Zimbabwe announced measures to raise additional tax revenue. This included limiting value-added tax (VAT)...

Mozambique is highly vulnerable to climate change. It faces frequent cyclones, floods, and droughts while having limited revenue collection capacity and social protection programmes. This paper assesses the distributional effects of climate shocks on household consumption and explores adaptation...

We use Zip code-level Statistics of Income data from the Internal Revenue Service to measure the distribution of income within U.S. metropolitan areas from 1998 through 2019. Exploiting geographic variation in income distribution over time, we study how unanticipated changes in the monetary...

This paper examines trends in household financial strain across Europe from 2006 to 2022, a period marked by three major economic shocks: the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. Using a subjective measure of welfare, financial strain, we analyse...

Due to rent control, the primary landlord-tenant dilemma prevents landlords from recovering costs of energy-efficiency retrofits, which mainly benefit tenants. This necessitates tenancy law to allocate retrofit and energy costs adequately. We analyze the impact of Germany's current system and...

As middle income countries grow they see an increase in demand for energy. To avoid extreme climate change as these countries develop, there will be a need to decarbonise the increased energy consumption as they grow. We use the PRICES microsimulation model to examine the impact of carbon...

Low emission zones (LEZ) represent a key environmental policy instrument to address air pollution in cities. LEZs have reduced air pollution and associated health damages in regulated areas, but it remains unclear who has benefited from cleaner air. To examine the distributional effects of LEZs,...

Using disaggregated US household expenditure data, we study the distributional consequences of the US-China trade war. We estimate a highly flexible demand system to compute household-specific price indexes. The increases in US tariffs on Chinese products between 2018 and 2019 led to an average...

Individuals trade present for future consumption across a range of economic behaviors, and this tradeoff may differ across socioeconomic groups. To assess these tradeoffs, we estimate a dynamic model of residential solar adoption and system sizing in California using household-level data on...

Inequality often arises from strategic interactions among individuals. This is so because risky investments can not only be resolved by chance (natural risk), but also by others' actions (social risk). We study how these different sources of inequality shape fairness judgments and the level of...

Inequality often arises from strategic interactions among individuals. This is so because risky investments can not only be resolved by chance (natural risk), but also by others' actions (social risk). We study how these different sources of inequality shape fairness judgments and the level of...

Inequality often arises from strategic interactions among individuals. This is so because risky investments can not only be resolved by chance (natural risk), but also by others' actions (social risk). We study how these different sources of inequality shape fairness judgments and the level of...

Inequality often arises from strategic interactions among individuals. This is so because risky investments can not only be resolved by chance (natural risk), but also by others' actions (social risk). We study how these different sources of inequality shape fairness judgments and the level of...

Populist parties use narratives about social injustice to portray climate policy as elite-driven and socially unjust. This study- based on a survey experiment with some 1,600 participants- examines how three common narratives about the costs associated with climate policy affect populist and...

This study demonstrates that heat disproportionately impairs human capital accumulation among low-performing students compared with their high-performing peers, using nationwide examination data from 22 million students in Japan. Given the strong correlation between academic performance and...

This paper investigates preferences for wealth redistribution through a conjoint experiment. Specifically, we explore how support for wealth redistribution depends on the social background of the taxpayer and whether their wealth is perceived as resulting from luck or hard work. Our findings...

Reducing income inequality is one of the goals under the Sustainable Development Goals. This study examines the intricate relationship between financial development, policy uncertainty, inflation, and income inequality. Panel data for African countries covering the period 2000-2022 were used in...

We examine how rising energy costs affect rental housing markets and inequality. Using listing data for the 30 largest German cities from 2015–2024, we find that higher energy prices are passed through to net rents in high-rent segments, where inefficient properties see significant rent...

The EU's Fit for 55 policy package to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 has direct impacts on households. The distributional analysis in this paper is in line with the existing literature in pointing to the risk of a moderately regressive distributional impact and to...

We estimate distributional implications of global food and oil price shocks by utilizing monthly panel data on consumption and income from India, and an IV strategy that removes variation coming from global demand shocks. While both shocks lead to stagflationary aggregate dynamics, they differ...