Minimum wage or negative income tax: why skilled workers may favor wage rigidities

In this article, we analyze the political choice of the extent and means of income redistribution between high and low-skilled workers. Redistributive tools encompass both fiscal transfers (a negative income tax) and a minimum wage requirement. We assume the use of fiscal instruments alone to be the first-best means of redistribution. We show that high-skilled workers may favor a second-best, minimum wage requirement because it increases unemployment, hence raising the marginal cost of redistribution, and creates a justification for them to moderate low-skilled workers’ claim for redistribution.      

How Does Fiscal Consolidation Impact on Income Inequality?

In this paper, we assess the impact of fiscal consolidation on income inequality. Using a panel of 18 industrialized countries from 1978 to 2009, we find that income inequality significantly rises during periods of fiscal consolidation. In addition, while fiscal policy that is driven by spending cuts seems to be detrimental for income distribution, tax hikes seem to have an equalizing effect. We also show that the size of the fiscal consolidation program (in percentage of GDP) has an impact on income inequality. In particular, when consolidation plans represent a small share of GDP, the income gap widens, suggesting that the burden associated with the effort affects disproportionately households at the bottom of the income distribution. Considering the linkages between banking crises and fiscal consolidation, we find that the effect on the income gap is amplified when fiscal adjustments take place after the resolution of such financial turmoil. Similarly, fiscal consolidation programs combined with inflation are likely to increase inequality and the effects of fiscal adjustments on inequality are amplified during periods of relatively low growth. Our results also provide support for a non‐linear relationship between inequality and income and corroborate the idea that trade can promote a more equal distribution of income.     

Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region?

In this paper we combine household surveys, national accounts, income tax data and wealth data in order to estimate income concentration in the Middle East for the period 1990–2016. According to our benchmark series, the Middle East appears to be the most unequal region in the world, with a top decile income share as large as 64 percent, compared to 37 percent in Western Europe, 47 percent in the US and 55 percent in Brazil (see Alvaredo et al. 2018). This is due both to enormous inequality between countries (particularly between oil‐rich and population‐rich countries) and to large inequality within countries (which we probably under‐estimate, given the limited access to proper fiscal data). We stress the importance of increasing transparency on income and wealth in the Middle East, as well as the need to develop mechanisms of regional redistribution and investment.     

收入不平等、政策偏向与最优财政再分配政策

本文构建的理论模型探讨了收入不平等、政策偏向与最优财政再分配之间的关系。模型显示:政策偏向是收入不平等与财政再分配恶性循环的决定因素。当政策偏向于穷人时,最优财政再分配系统的选择是提高税率,扩大对穷人的转移支付;当政策偏向于富人时,最优财政再分配系统的选择是降低税率,减少对穷人的转移支付。依据中国数据的实证研究发现:(1)中国收入不平等不断恶化,针对恶化的不平等而采取的财政再分配政策效果差,没能扭转不平等恶化趋势,政策偏向严重。(2)税收再分配政策偏向富人,使富人税负相对轻于穷人,居民收入不平等加剧;偏向于穷人的转移支付多为消费券(物),导致越扶越贫。为此,需要从调整所得税和转移支付政策等方面采取相关对策。     

Old‐age Social Security versus Forward Intergenerational Public Goods Provision

This paper introduces an overlapping‐generations model with earnings heterogeneity and borrowing constraints. The labour income tax and the allocation of tax revenue between social security and forward intergenerational public goods are determined in a bidimensional majoritarian voting game played by successive generations. The political equilibrium is characterized by an ends‐against‐the‐middle equilibrium where low‐income and high‐income individuals form a coalition in favour of a lower tax rate and less social security while middle‐income individuals favour a higher tax rate and greater social security. Government spending then shifts from social security to public goods provision if higher wage inequality is associated with a borrowing constraint and a high elasticity of marginal utility of youth consumption.     

The dual nature of public goods and congestion: the role of fiscal policy revisited

Abstract The role of fiscal policy is examined when public goods provide both productive and utility services. In the presence of congestion, the consumption tax is shown to be distortionary. Optimal fiscal policy involves using consumption‐based instruments in conjunction with the income tax. An income tax‐financed increase in government spending dominates both lump‐sum and consumption tax‐financing. Replacing the lump‐sum tax with an income tax to finance a given level of spending dominates introducing an equivalent consumption tax. These results contrast sharply with the literature, where the consumption tax is generally viewed as the least distortionary source of public finance.     

EFFECTS OF TAXES AND BENEFITS ON INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN KOREA

This paper examines the redistributive effects of Korea's fiscal policies, including consumption taxes and in‐kind benefits. Using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey of 2007, we find that taxes and transfers reduce income inequality in Korea by 13.8 percent. Contrary to the popular belief that direct taxes are the key tool for redistribution, in‐kind benefits, direct taxes, and social security contributions all decrease the Gini coefficient by 6.7, 4.7, and 2.9 percentage points, respectively. The redistributive effect of consumption taxes is small and negative (?0.5 percentage point). Policy simulations indicate that education spending financed by the personal income tax has a positive redistributive effect and that the lower 70 percent of households enjoy positive net benefits. Spending targeting the poor has a strong redistributive effect, which implies low popularity because the majority of households face net losses.     

Inequality within generation: Evidence from France

Intra-generational inequalities focus on the distributions within age groups. On the basis of French household income surveys carried out from 1996 to 2014, the Gini coefficient and D9/D1 inter-decile ratio were calculated so as to evaluate intra-generational income inequality before and after redistribution by the tax and welfare system. Age-Cohort-Period models were then estimated in order to disentangle age and generation effects. Over a life cycle, intra-generational inequality displays a hump-shaped curve peaking at age 55–59. This inequality is significantly lower among the youngest, whichever inequality indicator is used, and among the oldest, when measured by the inter-decile ratio. Comparison of pre- and post-redistribution income reveals that the tax and welfare system particularly reduces inequality among the young. Intra-generational inequality measured by the Gini coefficient increases significantly from one generation to the next. Measured by the inter-decile ratio, the increase is considerable for the gross income of those generations born from the 1970s on. However, the tax and welfare system has compensated for this increase, because analysis of the inter-decile ratio applied to disposable income shows no significant difference between generations.     

Redistributing Gains from Globalisation*

This paper analyses the effects of redistribution in a model of international trade with heterogeneous firms in which a fair‐wage effort mechanism leads to firm‐specific wage payments and involuntary unemployment. The redistribution scheme is financed by profit taxes and gives the same absolute lump‐sum transfer to all workers. International trade increases aggregate income and income inequality, ceteris paribus. If, however, trade is accompanied by a suitably chosen increase in the profit tax rate, it is possible to achieve higher aggregate income and a more equal income distribution than in autarky, provided that the share of exporters is sufficiently high.     

Do dictatorships redistribute more?

This paper examines the effect of political institutions on fiscal redistribution for a country-level panel from 1960–2010. Using data on Gini coefficients before and after government intervention, we apply a measure of effective fiscal redistribution that reflects the effect of taxes and transfers on income inequality. Our findings clearly indicate that non-democratic regimes demonstrate significantly greater direct fiscal redistribution. Subsequently, we employ fiscal data in an attempt to enlighten this puzzling empirical finding. We find that dictatorial regimes rely more heavily on cash transfers that exhibit a direct impact on net inequality and consequently on the difference between market and net inequality (i.e., effective fiscal redistribution), whereas democratic regimes devote a larger amount of resources to public inputs (health and education) that may influence market inequality but not the difference between market and net inequality per se. We argue that the driving force behind the observed differences within the pattern on government spending and effective fiscal redistribution is that democratic institutions lead survival-oriented leaders to care more for the private market, and thus to follow policies that enhance the productivity of the whole economy.     

Preferences for redistribution and exposure to tax-benefit schemes in Europe

This paper provides evidence that attitudes towards redistribution are associated with the extent of generosity of the redistributive context experienced by the individual, as measured by the likelihood of receiving positive benefit transfers net of fiscal contribution. We estimate reduced form tax-benefit equations with the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), and match the implied parameters to the respondents of the European Social Survey (ESS) on the basis of their characteristics. The period of analysis is 2008–2016. For identification, we exploit exogenous cross-country and time variation in tax rules and market income to disentangle implications of exposure to tax-benefit rules on preferences for redistribution from the effects of changes in income inequality. We find that exposure to positive net benefits increases support for redistribution by 1.4%–3% on baseline models, the effect being robust across a variety of specifications.     

调整我国收入分配关系的财政制度保障

现行财政制度的收入再分配职能效果不佳,原因在于两点,一是收入分配秩序的不规范,使累进性税收难以发挥缩小收入差距的作用;二是收入再分配过程中存在"逆向调节"问题,即低收入者所获转移性收入比高收入者所获转移性收入少,从而收入再分配扩大了收入差距。这两种情况的产生都与财政制度的某些缺陷有关,需要通过制度改革堵住漏洞,理顺机制,具体包括:建立规范透明的财政等方面的管理体制;建立城乡、地区一体化的社会保障体系;加大对欠发达地区和农村地区公共产品供给的投入力度。     

Fiscal Incidence in Ghana

We use methods developed by the Commitment to Equity Institute to assess the effects of government taxation, social spending and indirect subsidies on poverty and inequality in Ghana. We also simulate several policy reforms to assess their distributional consequences. Results show that, although the country has some very progressive taxes and well‐targeted expenditures, the extent of fiscal redistribution is small, but about what one would expect given Ghana's income level and relatively low initial inequality. Results for poverty reduction are less encouraging: were it not for the in‐kind benefits from health and education spending, the overall effect of government spending and taxation would actually increase poverty in Ghana. Eliminating energy subsidies and at the same time reallocating part of the savings to well‐targeted transfer programs could lower the fiscal deficit while reducing inequality and protecting the poor.     

The Political Economy of Clientelism*

In this paper, we argue that the political‐commitment problem provides an explanation for why much income redistribution takes an inefficient form, particularly employment in the public sector. A job is a credible way of redistributing when it provides rents (such as in situations with moral hazard), and employment is optimal ex post. Moreover, a job is selective and reversible, and thus ties the continuation utility of a voter to the political success of a particular politician. We show that the need to make offers of employment incentive‐compatible leads to inefficiencies in the supply of public goods. We also show that such inefficient redistribution becomes relatively attractive in situations with high inequality and low productivity. Inefficiency is increased when the stakes from politics are high, when inequality is high, and when money matters less than ideology in politics.     

Fiscal efficiency,redistribution and welfare

The expanding literature on fiscal decentralization (FD) emphasizes the role of institutional mechanisms for FD's welfare effects. We analyze the welfare effects of FD in case of a fiscal transfer mechanism that punishes inefficiency in tax collection and compensates for local income deficiency. In addition, a portion of transfers is earmarked for investment. Given a level of FD and these rules, the representative local government chooses its tax collection effort to maximize local utility. The solution of the model reveals that the stricter the redistributive rule, the higher are steady-state fiscal efficiency and welfare. While the effectiveness of the redistributive parameters increases with centralization of the revenue pool, it decreases with the tax rate. Both welfare and income distribution, on the other hand, improve with the degree of revenue centralization and the tax rate. Besides, fiscal efficiency and redistribution decrease with investment-earmarked transfers.     

Understanding Changes in the Distribution and Redistribution of Income: A Unifying Decomposition Framework

In recent decades income inequality has increased in many developed countries but the role of tax and transfer reforms is often poorly understood. We propose a new method allowing for the decomposition of historical changes in income distribution and redistribution measures into: (i) the immediate effect of tax‐transfer policy reforms in the absence of behavioral responses; (ii) the effect of labor supply responses induced by these reforms; and (iii) a third component allowing us to explore the effect of changes in the distribution of a wide range of determinants, including the effect of employment changes not induced by policy reforms. The application of the decomposition to Australia reveals that the direct effect of tax‐transfer policy reforms accounts for half of the observed increase in income inequality between 1999 and 2008, while the increased dispersion of wages and capital incomes also played an important role.     

Fractionalization and the size of government

I study the effect of voters with a group-based social conscience. Voters care more about the well-being of those belonging to their own group than the rest of the population. Within a model of political tax determination, both fractionalization and group antagonism reduce the support for redistribution. Whereas within group inequality increases support for redistribution, inequality between groups has the opposite effect. These results hold even if a poor group forms a majority. Using a panel constructed from US micro data, I find support for the hypothesis that within race inequality increases redistribution while between race inequality decreases redistribution.     

Indirect Tax Exemptions and the Distribution ot Lifetime Income: A Simulation Analysis*

This paper uses a simulation model to compare the lifetime consequences of a revenue neutral partial shift towards a consumption tax, involving exemptions, with its cross-sectional effects. Exemptions of goods consumed proportionately more by lower income groups reduce the inequality of the distribution of net lifetime consumption by more than in the cross-sectional case. However, the tax shift increases lifetime inequality by more than it increases cross-sectional inequality, and the net effect is that exemptions cannot compensate for the income tax change. Concern with inequality is most appropriately handled by raising transfer payments rather than introducing exemptions.     

Reexamination of Economic Growth, Tax Policy, and Distributive Politics

The paper examines the relationship between economic growth, tax policy, and distribution of capital and labor ownership in a one‐sector political‐economy model of endogenous growth with productive government spending financed by a proportional tax on capital income. The analysis shows that inequality in wealth and income can be positively or negatively related to the optimal tax rate. In either environment, higher inequality leads to a lower after‐tax return to capital, thereby reducing the economy's growth rate.     

Revisiting the redistribution effects of intergovernmental fiscal transfers: evidence from Taiwan

This paper employs a panel of 23 local governments in Taiwan over 1998–2010 to re-estimate the redistribution effects of intergovernmental fiscal transfers by considering a self-financing resources of local government as the transition variable in panel smooth transition regression models. Empirical results show that the income (or tax revenues) redistribution effects of fiscal transfer policies are nonlinear and vary with time and across local governments. The grants from central government can improve income and tax revenues distribution of local governments; however, the centrally allotted tax revenues have inverse effects and the total fiscal transfers have ambiguous effects. The total fiscal transfer is a proper policy instrument for improving income redistribution, and the grants for improving tax revenues redistribution. However, high self-financing resources ratios are harmful for these redistribution effects.