The aim of this paper is to compare estimates of the adjusted wage gap from different methods and sets of conditioning variables. We apply available parametric and non-parametric methods to LFS data from Poland for 2012. While the raw gap amounts to nearly 10 percent of the female wage; the adjusted wage gap estimates range between 15 percent and as much as 23 percent depending on the method and the choice of conditional variables. The differences across conditioning variables within the same method do not exceed 3pp, but including more variables almost universally results in larger estimates of the adjusted wage gaps. Methods that account for common support and selection into employment yielded higher estimates of the adjusted wage gap. While the actual point estimates of adjusted wage gap are slightly different, all of them are roughly twice as high as the raw gap, which corroborates the policy relevance of this methodological study.JEL Codes: C24, J31, J71

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As in high-income countries, reduced rates of vat and vat exemptions ("preferential vat rates") are a common feature of indirect tax systems in lmics. Many of the goods and services that are granted preferential ratessuch as foodstuffs and kerosene-seem likely to receive such treatment on the grounds that they provide a means for the government to indirectly target poorer households, for whom such expenditures may take up a large proportion of their total budget. We use microsimulation methods to estimate the impact of preferential vat rates in four lmic countries, considering their effect on revenues, poverty, inequality, and across the consumption distribution. We consider whether other policy tools might be better suited for the pursuit of distributional objectives by estimating the impact of existing cash transfer schemes and a hypothetical scenario where the revenue raised from broadening the vat base is used to fund a universal basic income (ubi) in each country. We find that although preferential vat rates reduce poverty, they are not well targeted towards poor households overall. Existing cash transfer schemes are better targeted but would not provide a suitable means of compensation for a broader vat base given issues related to coverage and targeting mechanisms. Despite being completely untargeted, a ubi funded by the revenue gains from a broader vat base would create large net gains for poor households and reduce inequality and most measures of extreme poverty in each of the countries studied-even if only 75% of the additional vat revenue was disbursed as ubi payments.

a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f oThe objective of this paper is to inquire the consequences of some simplifying assumptions typically made in the overlapping generations (OLG) models of pension systems and pension system reforms. This literature is largely driven by policy motivations and the alternative modelling choices are rarely discussed. On the other hand, the complexity of general equilibrium OLG modelling necessitates some simplifications in the model. We run a series of experiments in which the same reform in the same economy is modelled with six different sets of assumptions concerning the functional form of the utility function, time inconsistency, bequests' redistribution, labour supply decisions and internalization of the linkage between social security contributions and benefits in these decisions as well as public spending. We find that these assumptions significantly affect both the size and the sign of the macroeconomic and welfare measures of the policy effects with the order of magnitude comparable to the reform itself.