Amsterdam, Netherlands

Taxes: Economic Inequality & Social Welfare in a Globalized World

Why, how, and whom do we tax? Global forces limit what governments can provide and pay for, requiring hard choices.

How do we tax and whom when the rich can’t be taxed? Central to understanding the welfare implications of taxation of incomes, consumption, or wealth, is the trade-off between dual government goals of efficiency and equity in the context of a globalized world with partly mobile taxpayers that react to and anticipate on and influence government tax policy choices.

How, then, to tax optimally, so the state can raise enough revenue to provide public goods and effective redistribution while minimizing distortions? What if taxpayers evade or emigrate? What are the implications for inequality? What are the limits to taxation? We discuss economic theory and state-of-the-art empirical research.

Course leader

Stefan Hochguertel

Target group

Master's, PhD, Postdoc, and working professionals.

This course is designed for students with a thorough background in introductory or intermediate microeconomics, calculus, and econometrics, and helps them reach the modelling proficiency that modern graduate schools and research institutes demand.

Course aim

(i) Students recognize the importance of empirical price and income elasticities of demand and supply in characterizing responses to tax rate changes and in analysing extent and nature of tax incidence and deadweight losses of taxation.

(ii) Students can explain theoretical underpinnings, mechanisms, and functioning of policy and modelling tools helpful for tax design. They can map out ways to optimally design tax systems, taking elasticities, information frictions, and behavioural tendencies into account.

(iii) Students can diagnose how policy preferences shape social welfare criteria in evaluating the benefit and price of redistribution along the central equity-efficiency trade-off and can explain how real-world tax policies are at most second-best.

(iv) Students make explicit the linkages between inequality and social welfare and can demonstrate the need and limitations to tax the ones with the largest ability to pay.

(v) Students can explain the workings and confines of policy tool sets when analysing rational tax evader’s tax dodging.

(vi) Students can explain and discuss how government choices may fail citizens through engaging in wasteful tax competition and encouraging tax avoidance.

(vii) Students master the choice and use of appropriate empirical tools to critically review and assess empirical, microeconomic and micro-econometric research on taxation.

Fee info

EUR 930: Tuition fee

For 2 ECTS courses:
Students, PhD students and employees of VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam UMC or an Aurora Network Partner: €580*
Students and PhD students: €680*
Professionals: €880*
Applications received before 15 October -€50 (Early Bird Discount)

For 3 ECTS courses:
Students, PhD students and employees of VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam UMC or an Aurora Network Partner: €630*
Students and PhD students: €730*
Professionals: €930*
Applications received before 15 October -€50 (Early Bird Discount)

* Auditor participants receive €100 discount. Not available for all courses. Early Bird Discount is not valid on the auditor fee. Find out more under the section: Type of participation

The tuition fee includes: 
* Application and registration
* Exclusive course content for a limited number of participants
* Individual/group guidance from the course organiser
* Access to all online VU facilities such as the library and online learning environments
* A certificate of attendance after completing the course 
* A transcript of records, including the grade and the obtained ECTS
* The full support of the winter school team
* Optional social activities