Employment- and growth effects of tax reforms

Since the mid-1990s almost all OECD countries have engaged in fundamental reforms of their tax systems. There is a trend towards higher social security contributions and lower tax rates on personal and corporate income. This paper explores whether these tax policy measures are effective means for reducing unemployment and accelerating economic growth. Using a Pissarides type search model with endogenous growth, we analyze how savings and the incentive to create new jobs are affected by revenue-neutral tax swaps between wage income taxes, payroll taxes, capital income taxes and taxes levied on capital costs. In our framework, cutting the capital income tax (reducing the double taxation of dividend income) financed by a higher payroll tax turns out to be superior, such a policy mix fosters both employment and growth. Most other tax reforms imply a trade-off between employment and growth.     

Tax principles and tax harmonization under imperfect competition: A cautionary example

This paper shows that under imperfect competition, the welfare effects of indirect tax harmonization may depend crucially on whether taxes are levied by the destination or the origin principle. In a standard model of imperfect competition, while harmonization always makes at least one country better off, and may be Pareto-improving, when taxes are levied under the destination principle (which currently applies in the European Union), harmonization of origin-based taxes (as recently proposed by the European Commission) is certain to be Pareto-worsening when the preferences in the two countries are identical, and is likely to be so even when they differ.     

Environmental Taxes and the Double Dividend

This paper investigates the employment and welfare effects of an environmental tax reform, i.e. raising environmental taxes and using the revenues to cut labor taxes. The analysis reveals that such a reform does not necessarily raise employment: it may replace explicit labor taxes by higher implicit taxes on labor. However, employment may rise if the reform succeeds in shifting the tax burden away from workers to those outside the labor force. The paper explores also how distributional concerns affect optimal environmental taxes.     

Some Basic Economics of Carbon Taxes

This article asks three questions. First, how do carbon taxes drive economic and environmental outcomes? Second, what is the appropriate economic base on which carbon taxes should be levied? Finally, how well does a carbon tax deliver economic and environmental outcomes compared to a comparable emissions trading scheme?     

Urban job creation and unemployment in LDCs: Todaro vs. Harris and Todaro

Overwhelming urban migration occurred so rapidly in many developing countries that widespread unemployment and squalid living conditions are commonplace. For many of these countries, stopping urban migration has become a major policy. Two models propose 2 different theories of urban unemployment. Todaro's short-term effects model concludes that job creation actually causes unemployment. Todaro and Harris formulated a long-term effects model in which welfare subsidies create more employment and stimulate the economy. A real solution to urban job creation would include optimal allocation of investment between the rural and labor sectors. A once and for all hiring tax would reduce replacement hiring. It is impossible to design an optimal tax subsidy package for urban unemployment unless it includes knowledge of the dynamic response of migration and unemployment to the rate of net and gross hiring of labor. If subsidy taxes are levied on the agricultural sector, the net result may be a higher rate of capital formation in the (low social return) manufacturing sector and a lower one in the agricultural sector.     

Brain-drain taxes for non-benevolent governments

This paper investigates the welfare effects of brain-drain taxes levied by non-benevolent governments, whereby a country collects a tax from skilled emigrants but potentially wastes a sizable portion of the revenue. Using a model in which taxes are chosen to maximize expected political rents, I show that the availability of a brain-drain tax increases a weighted sum of citizen utilities. However, the government's optimal brain-drain tax is found to be higher than the level that maximizes this weighted sum. In another model, a brain-drain tax is found to be desirable when governments use public good expenditures to compete for mobile residents.     

UNCERTAIN INCOME,UNCERTAIN TAXES AND RICARDIAN EQUIVALENCE*

L. K. C. Chan (1983) and R. B. Barsky et al. (1986) have demonstrated that a tax cut financed by bonds to be repaid from proportional income taxes on uncertain future income, by reducing the latter's riskiness, stimulates current consumption - Ricardian equivalence does not hold. However, their two-period models exclude the possibility that future taxes are uncertain. In this paper a three-period model is developed that, by allowing the government two periods in which to collect taxes, introduces ex ante tax rate uncertainty. This renders the result concerning Ricardian equivalence ambiguous. By comparison, taxes levied as lump sums and via a ‘lottery’ respectively produce the ‘usual’ effects (zero and negative) on consumption.     

Employment effects of payroll taxes - an empirical test for Germany

This study tests to what degree the incidence of payroll taxes in Germany is on employment and whether in consequence payroll taxes, in particular social insurance contributions, are the culprit behind the growing unemployment problem. Using industry level data for 18 years (1977–1994) a system of five dynamic factor demand equations is estimated. Various simulations indicate that the employment effects of payroll taxes are minimal.     

Taxation and Labor Markets

We exploit the common features of models such as union, search and efficiency wage models to develop a framework that can be used to analyze the effects of any revenue-neutral tax reform on employment. In particular, we show that taxes paid by workers are not equivalent to taxes paid by firms when taxes are non linear. Moreover, we show that the positive impact of tax progressivity on employment is attributable only to a limited set of hypotheses. Received May 2, 2001; revised version received November 27, 2001 Published online: December 5, 2002     

Improving Mineral Taxation Policy in Australia*

Australian State governments have begun to increase royalty rates and other mineral taxes. The most instructive approach to taxation policy for the minerals sector is to set up a general model of mines which year the optimal structure of taxes. A model of mine production under uncertainty is presented. The optimal tax is a single tax with two parts. a bonus bid and conditional tax payments based on the ex-post rent of the mine. The actual structure of taxes levied by State and Commonwealth governments is seen to be distinctly sub-optimal in several respects. Proposals to move the actual to word the optimal structure are made, recognizing some of the constraints on information and the maximum acceptable rate of tax reform .     

Global Warming, Proportional Carbon Taxes, and International Fund for Atmospheric Stabilization

In this paper, we prove in terms of a simple dynamic model of global warming that sustainable time-paths of the atmospheric accumulations of carbon dioxide are obtained as the standard market equilibrium under the system of proportional carbon taxes, where the carbon taxes are levied at the rate that is proportional to the per capita national income of each country, with the discounted present value of the impact coefficient of global warming as the coefficient of proportion.     

FIRING COSTS AND BUSINESS CYCLE FLUCTUATIONS*

This article considers a real business cycle model with establishment level dynamics and uses it to analyze the effects of firing taxes. It finds that firing taxes can have significant consequences on business cycle fluctuations, that the largest effects are on aggregate employment, and that even relatively small firing taxes have substantial effects. A significant contribution of the article is computational: It describes how to use standard linear‐quadratic methods to solve for a stochastic equilibrium of an (S,s) economy with tax distortions.     

Taxes,inequality and the size of the informal sector

In this note, we develop a simple heterogeneous-agent model with incomplete markets to explain the prevalence of a large, low-productivity, informal sector in developing countries. In our model, taxes levied on formal sector agents are used to finance the provision of a productive public infrastructure, which creates a productivity premium from formalization. Our model offers endogenous differentiation of rich and poor countries. Complete formalization is an equilibrium only in countries with the appropriate initial conditions. We discuss the existence of this equilibrium and highlight the ambiguous effect of taxes.     

Index to Volume 52, 2000

In an efficiency wage economy with variable profits, a shift from payroll to employment taxes will reduce unemployment if the tax level is held constant at the initial wage. However, unemployment will rise if firms are constrained to zero profits in the long run and if tax revenues are constant. This reversal of employment effects occurs because the shift in taxes reduces wages. This implies a budget deficit. Hence, taxes will have to be raised if revenues are held constant. If the firm's profits cannot change, the tax increase will cause some firms to close down and unemployment will rise. Thus, the predicted employment consequences of changes in the tax structure depend on assumptions about the time horizon and budget constraint.     

县级财政负担与地方公共服务:农村税费改革的影响

本文使用1997—2005年县级面板数据分析了农村税费改革对县级财政负担和地方公共服务的影响,并且使用倍差法来鉴别其因果效应。税费改革取消了农村地区原本不规范的征费,其中一部分转换为农业税的形式征收,从而账面上农业税收入增加并且使得总税收收入增加。但由于征费被取消,使得事实上县级政府的财政负担有所增加。由于县级政府是地方公共服务的主要供给者,我们发现税费改革在长期内降低了公共服务的供给。     

RENOVATIO MONETAE: WHEN GESELL TAXES WORKED

Gesell taxes on money have recently received attention as a way of alleviating the zero lower bound on interest rates. Less known is that such taxes generated seigniorage in medieval Europe for around two centuries. When a Gesell tax was levied, current coins ceased to be legal and had to be exchanged into new coins for a fee. Using a cash-in-advance model, we analyze under what conditions agents exchange coins and the tax generates revenues. A low exchange fee, high punishments for using old coins, and a long time period between re-mintings induce people to use new coins.     

ECONOMY‐WIDE EFFECTS OF REDUCING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN U.S. EMPLOYMENT

We use an economy‐wide model to analyze the effects of three broad programs to reduce illegal immigrants in U.S. employment: tighter border security; taxes on employers; and vigorous prosecution of employers. After looking at macroeconomic industry and occupational effects, we decompose the welfare effect for legal residents into six parts covering changes in: producer surplus and illegal wage rates; skilled employment opportunities for natives; aggregate capital; aggregate legal employment; the terms of trade; and public expenditure. The type of program matters. Our analysis suggests a prima facie case in favor of taxes on employers. (JEL J61, C68)     

Emission Taxes versus Other Environmental Policies

In the environmental policy of most countries, various forms of quotas and direct regulation are more important than environmental taxes. This paper addresses four arguments which are often given against the use of emission taxes. The three arguments related to information asymmetries and non-convexities are valid in the sense that they point to complications in the use of environmental taxes. The fourth argument is related to the employment effects of different types of environmental policies in economies with unemployment. Although this argument is frequently used by politicians, the analysis provides no justification for it. On the contrary: in the model used, employment is higher with environmental taxes than with non-revenue-raising environmental policies.     

环境税收的国际借鉴及对中国的启示

环境税收政策在国外发达国家已付诸实施并取得了一定效果。借鉴国外在环境税收方面的成功经验,中国在研究实施环境税制中应循序渐进地推进税制改革,同时利用新增税收增加就业、提高能源消费弹性,以实现经济的可持续发展。