The paper studies the determinants of internal migration in Russia. Using panel data on gross region-to-region migration flows in 1992-99, we estimate the effect of economic, political and social factors. Although overall migration is rather low, it turns out that its intensity does depend on economic factors even controlling for fixed effects for each origin-destination pair. People move from poorer and job scarce regions with worse public good provision to those which are richer and prospering better both in terms of employment prospects and public goods. Migration is, however, constrained by the lack of liquidity; for the poorest regions, an increase in income raises rather than decreases outmigration. Our estimates imply that up to a third of Russian regions are locked in poverty traps.JEL classifications: P23, J61, P36, R23.

The existing literature on precautionary saving is based almost entirely on the assumption that the household acts as if it consisted of a single individual decision-taker. In reality saving decisions are typically taken by two-person households. This paper examines the implications of this observation for the existence of precautionary saving, and shows that the assumption that the individual utility functions satisfy the conditions for precautionary saving to exist can imply that the household exhibits precautionary saving, but only under strong assumptions on the type of risk change being considered. (JEL D14, D81)

No abstract

Gender Bias in Tax Systems Based on Household Income *The assumption that household income is strongly and positively correlated with a household's real standard of living provides the basis for the joint taxation of families, which has the effect of discriminating against married women as second earners. This paper shows, in the context of a model of the household with young children present, that this assumption is not tenable. The fact that there is considerable heterogeneity in female labour supply which cannot be explained by wage rates and the number and ages of children requires us to look for other explanations, and we argue that these can be found in the variation of child care costs and productivities across households. When these are taken into account, we show, by theoretical modelling and numerical simulations based on survey data, that household income is a poor indicator of household well-being.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. In a number of high-income countries over the past few decades there has been a large growth in income inequality and at the same time a shift in the burden of taxation from the top to the middle of the income distribution. This paper applies the theory of optimal piecewise linear taxation to the issue of the taxation of top incomes. Our results suggest that an appropriate response to rising inequality is a shift towards a more progressive multi-bracket income tax system, with a more differentiated structure of rates in the top percentiles.JEL Classification: H21, H24, D31, D63