Discussion Papers no. 765

Distributional benchmarking in tax policy evaluations

Given an objective to exploit cross-sectional micro data to evaluate the distributional effects of tax policies over a time period, the practitioner of public economics will find that the relevant literature offers a wide variety of empirical approaches.

Given an objective to exploit cross-sectional micro data to evaluate the distributional effects of tax policies over a time period, the practitioner of public economics will find that the relevant literature offers a wide variety of empirical approaches. For example, studies vary with respect to the definition of individual well-being and to what extent explicit benchmarking techniques are utilized to describe policy effects. The present paper shows how the concept of distributional benchmarking can be exploited to describe methodological options for the tax policy analyst. We present classifications of the various approaches which can be found in the literature for evaluations of individual taxation along these lines, and provide empirical illustrations and interpretations for the case of the personal income tax schedule of Norway for the period 2000–2010.

About the publication

Title

Distributional benchmarking in tax policy evaluations

Authors

Thor Olav Thoresen, Zhiyang Jia, Peter J. Lambert

Series and number

Discussion Papers no. 765

Publisher

Statistics Norway

Topic

Discussion Papers

ISSN

0809-733X1892-753X

Number of pages

29

Language

English

About Discussion Papers

Discussion papers comprise research papers intended for international journals and books. A preprint of a Discussion Paper may be longer and more elaborate than a standard journal article as it may include intermediate calculations, background material etc.

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