EUROMOD: the European Union tax-benefit microsimulation model

This paper aims to provide an introduction to the current state of the art of EUROMOD, the European Union tax-benefit microsimulation model. It explains the original motivations for building a multi-country EU-wide model and summarises its current organisation. It provides an overview of EUROMOD components, covering its policy scope, the input data, the validation process and some technical aspects such as the tax-benefit programming language and the user interface. The paper also reviews some recent applications of EUROMOD and, finally, considers future developments

Effetti distributivi delle imposte decentrate sui consumi

2partially_openFigari F.; Gandullia L.Figari, Francesco; Gandullia, L

Decay of a Bound State under a Time-Periodic Perturbation: a Toy Case

We study the time evolution of a three dimensional quantum particle, initially in a bound state, under the action of a time-periodic zero range interaction with ``strength'' (\alpha(t)). Under very weak generic conditions on the Fourier coefficients of (\alpha(t)), we prove complete ionization as (t \to \infty). We prove also that, under the same conditions, all the states of the system are scattering states.Comment: LaTeX2e, 15 page

Spin dependent point potentials in one and three dimensions

We consider a system realized with one spinless quantum particle and an array of $N$ spins 1/2 in dimension one and three. We characterize all the Hamiltonians obtained as point perturbations of an assigned free dynamics in terms of some ``generalized boundary conditions''. For every boundary condition we give the explicit formula for the resolvent of the corresponding Hamiltonian. We discuss the problem of locality and give two examples of spin dependent point potentials that could be of interest as multi-component solvable models.Comment: 15 pages, some misprints corrected, one example added, some references modified or adde

Improving poverty reduction in Europe: what works best where?

This article examines how income poverty is affected by changes to the scale of tax-benefit policies and which are the most cost-effective policies in reducing poverty or limiting its increase in seven diverse EU countries. We do that by measuring the implications of increasing/reducing the scale of each policy instrument, using microsimulation methods while holding constant the policy design and national context. We consider commonly applied policy instruments with a direct effect on household income: child benefits, social assistance, income tax lower thresholds and a benchmark case of rescaling the whole tax-benefit system. We find that the assessment of the most cost-effective instrument may depend on the measure of poverty used and the direction and scale of the change. Nevertheless, our results indicate that the options that reduce poverty most cost-effectively in most countries are increasing child benefits and social assistance, while reducing the former is a particularly poverty-increasing way of making budgetary cuts

Stochastic Quantization of Scalar Fields in de Sitter Spacetime

We consider the stochastic quantization method for scalar fields defined in a curved manifold. The two-point function associated to a massive self-interacting scalar field is evaluated, up to the first order level in the coupling constant $\lambda$, for the case of de Sitter Euclidean metric. Its value for the asymptotic limit of the Markov parameter $\tau\to\infty$ is exhibited. We discuss in detail the covariant stochastic regularization to render the one-loop two-point function finite in the de Sitter Euclidean metric