A comparison of the fiscal and distributional effects of alternative basic income implementation modes across the EU28

This paper examines the fiscal and distributional effects of a number of alternative basic income implementation modes across 28 European welfare states. The paper aims to make three contributions to the literature. Firstly, through the use of EUROMOD’s advanced ‘add-on’ and ‘loop’ features, we develop an innovative methodological approach to comparing the effects of revenue neutral basic income reforms across countries. As a consequence, the study is more ambitious in scope than previous basic income microsimulation research. Our second contribution is to generate rich and detailed comparative data regarding the fiscal and distributional effects of different ways of implementing basic income, thus contributing to the burgeoning literature on policy design features and trade-offs. Thirdly, we compare these effects and trade-offs across a large sample of European countries, and thus derive some tentative insights into basic income’s congruence with different types of welfare state.