The European Commission has formally recognised that adequate provision of basic household services, including energy, communications, water and transport, is
AbstractLatin America is one of the world's only regions to have witnessed a fall in income inequality during the 2000s. This paper evaluates the role fiscal policy played in this change. Recent scholarship has examined this in individual countries; lacking is a regional perspective. We examine the effects of nine fiscal instruments on income inequality in 17 countries between 1990 and 2014. Fiscal policy had a positive – albeit small – effect in reducing income inequality, especially from 2003, working best at the urban level. Public spending on education, personal income taxes and social contributions were especially instrumental in reducing income inequality.
Three Economic Adjustment Programmes (EAPs) were implemented in Greece, between 2010 and 2015, without achieving the proposed economic objectives. This article analyses the impact of the EAPs in Greece using the synthetic control method (SCM) and has three main contributions. First, it identifies a long-term negative impact worth 35.3 per cent of the Greek GDP per capita caused by the application of the EAPs. Second, it finds that three-quarters of the estimated negative and unsustainable impact accumulated over the 2010–2012 period. Third, it identifies a regressive effect of the EAPs on income distribution, the Greek population with lower incomes experienced a greater negative effect caused by the adjustment programmes. These results underscore the need to review and correct the conditional financial assistance framework currently in force in the European Union.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.