Free Immigration and Welfare Access: The Swedish Experience

With the expansion of the European Union from 15 to 25 member countries in 2004, fears of migrants’ excessive welfare use led 14 of the 15 older member countries to impose restrictions on the access of citizens of the new member countries – the A10 countries – to their welfare systems. Sweden was the only exception. This paper evaluates the net contribution of post‐enlargement A10 immigrants to Swedish public finances in 2007. On average, A10 immigrants generate less public revenue than the population on average, but they also cost less. The net result is a zero or small positive net contribution. In particular, A10 immigrants do not benefit more from basic social welfare than the population on average. The discounted net contribution over the A10 immigrants’ lifetimes may be positive or negative depending, for example, on their income assimilation rates and on future real interest rates.     

Mustn't Grumble: Immigration,Health and Health Service Use in the UK and Germany*

A rise in population caused by increased immigration is sometimes accompanied by concerns that the increase in population puts additional or differential pressure on welfare services, which might affect the net fiscal contribution of immigrants. The UK and Germany have experienced significant increases in immigration in recent years and this study uses longitudinal data from both countries to examine whether immigrants differ in their use of health services from native-born individuals on arrival and over time. While immigrants to Germany, but not the UK, are more likely to self-report poor health than the native-born population, the samples of immigrants use hospital and GP services at broadly the same rate as the native-born populations in both countries. Controls for observed and unobserved differences between immigrants and native-born sample populations make little difference to these broad findings.     

Immigration and local spending in social services: evidence from a massive immigration wave

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between immigration and redistributive public spending by using the recent, massive arrival of immigrants in Spain. Specifically, we focus our analysis on the effect of 1998–2006 changes in local immigrant density on contemporaneous changes in municipal spending in social services. To address the potential endogenous location of immigrants, we adopt an instrumental variables approach that uses the distribution of rental housing in 1991 to predict the location of immigrant inflows. The results indicate that (per capita) social spending increased less in those municipalities that recorded the largest increases in immigrant density. We interpret our results as a reduction in natives’ demand for redistributive public spending.     

Housing and the Tax System: How Large Are the Distortions in the Euro Area?*

This paper presents new evidence on the impact of the preferential treatment of owner‐occupied housing in the euro area. We find that tax benefits to homeowners reduce the user cost of housing capital by almost 40 per cent compared with the efficient level under neutral taxation. On average, the tax subsidy translates into an excess consumption of housing services equivalent to 7.8 per cent of the value of owner‐occupied housing, or about 30 per cent of financial asset holdings in household portfolios. The bulk of the subsidy stems from undertaxation of the return to home equity, while the average contribution of the tax rebate for mortgage interest payments is driven down by relatively low loan‐to‐value ratios in the data. However, at the margin, the tax‐induced incentive to use mortgage debt to finance the purchase of the main residence is sizeable.     

The economic costs and benefits of UK defence exports

This study examines the economic costs and benefits to the UK of a 50 per cent cut in UK defence exports from the average level of 1998 and 1999. The net impact on the government budget is estimated to be an ongoing loss of between around £40 million and £100 million a year: around 0.2–0.4 per cent of the total UK defence budget. In addition, there is estimated to be a one‐off net adjustment cost, spread over five years, of between £0.9 billion and £1.4 billion. A further more speculative adjustment cost (estimated at around £1.1 billion) could result if the loss of income associated with the ‘terms‐of‐trade£ effect were also included. In terms of the wider debate about defence exports, the results of this study suggest first that the economic effects of the reduction in defence exports are relatively small and largely one‐off, and secondly that the balance of arguments about UK defence exports should be determined mainly by non‐economic factors.     

On the Political Economy of Low Skilled Immigration and the Welfare State

This paper inquires into the collective decision making on both unemployment insurance and immigration. It is shown that low skill immigration typically increases the contribution rate to the unemployment insurance system. This can translate into higher benefits, the increase of the economy-wide unemployment rate nonwithstanding. The host country allows for immigration only if high skilled natives are sufficiently powerful. Furthermore, political rights of immigrants are restricted to a minimum.     

The Effects of EU Formula Apportionment on Corporate Tax Revenues*

The European Commission proposes to replace the current system of taxing corporate income using separate accounting by a two‐step ‘consolidation and apportionment’ procedure. This paper uses a large set of unconsolidated firm‐level data to assess the likely impact on corporate tax revenues in each member state. Taking pre‐tax profit as given, overall tax revenues would be likely to drop by 2.5 per cent if companies could choose whether to participate. By contrast, if they were forced to participate, total tax revenues would be likely to increase by more than 2 per cent, leaving some European countries ‐ most notably, Spain, Sweden and the UK ‐ better off. We investigate how sensitive these results are to the apportionment factors used.     

The Anticipated Capitalisation Effect of a New Metro Line on Housing Prices*

Housing units with closer access to public transportation enjoy a higher market value than those with similar characteristics but poorer access. This difference can be explained by the lower cost of transport to the main workplaces and shopping areas in town. For this reason, investments in public transport infrastructure, such as building a new metro line, are capitalised totally or partially into land and housing prices. This work empirically analyses the degree of capitalisation into housing prices of the benefits of the new Line 4 of the Santiago metro system, which began operating in December 2005. We focus on anticipated capitalisation into housing prices at the moment construction of Line 4 was announced and at the moment information on the basic engineering project was unveiled, identifying the location of the future stations. We use a unique database containing all home buying and selling transactions in the Greater Santiago area between December 2000 and March 2004. The results show that the average apartment price rose by between 4.2 per cent and 7.9 per cent after construction was announced and by between 3.1 per cent and 5.5 per cent after the location of the stations was identified. These increases were not distributed evenly, but depended on the distance from the apartment to the nearest station. An indirect effect of this kind of capitalization is that property tax collections will increase if property is reappraised following the price rise. This effect is not negligible in magnitude and could represent 11 to 17 per cent of investment in the new metro line. This raises and interesting discussion on how the metro network extension is financed.     

The fiscal dimension of a common monetary policy: results with a non-Ricardian global model

The paper studies the interaction of fiscal and monetary policy within an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Results suggest that, in a model in which bonds and money are counted as net wealth, an important source of cross-country heterogeneity in response to a common monetary shock is the differences in national economies' budgetary positions. In particular, we note that centralising seigniorage revenues may lead, in the long term, to wealth redistribution across countries. Although institutional arrangements such as the Stability Pact might not be necessary to ensure fiscal sustainability, its strict enforcement is shown to be associated with overall ever-lasting benefits. Transition to the new steady state is, however, likely to be remarkably costly for high-debt EMU countries. Finally, different degrees of efficiency characterising European credit markets do not seem to play a major role in explaining asymmetric responses.     

An analysis of majority owner‐managed companies in the UK

This paper investigates the characteristics of 73 UK companies in which managers have an ownership stake of greater than 50 per cent. We find that majority owner‐managed companies make less use of alternative corporate control systems and are less likely to remove their chief executive officer or other board members following poor performance. However, our sample firms actually outperform diffusely held companies of similar size in the same industry. The determinants of majority control appear more closely related to the characteristics of the controlling shareholders rather than the firm's operating environment. Changes in the ownership structure of our sample companies owe more to changes in owner‐specific characteristics and security issuance than they are related to changes in the company's operating environment or company performance. We conclude that despite the obvious agency costs of managerial entrenchment for closely held companies, for the present sample at least the incentive alignment benefits of large director shareholdings are beneficial to outside shareholders.     

Stimulating Housing Markets

We study temporary fiscal stimulus designed to support distressed housing markets by inducing demand from buyers in the private market. Using difference-in-differences and regression kink research designs, we find that the First-Time Homebuyer Credit increased home sales by 490,000 (9.8%), median home prices by $2,400 (1.1%) per standard deviation increase in program exposure, and the transition rate into homeownership by 53%. The policy response did not reverse immediately. Instead, demand comes from several years in the future: induced buyers were three years younger in 2009 than typical first-time buyers. The program's market-stabilizing benefits likely exceeded its direct stimulus effects.     

The Employment and Earnings Gaps between Natives and Immigrants in the UK between 1981 and 2006

We exploit the sizeable and long Lifetime Labour Market Database (LLMDB) to estimate the immigrant–native employment gap across gender, across continents of nationality and across lengths of stay in the UK between 1981 and 2006. These estimates are a novel contribution, as estimates for men and women are scarce in the literature and estimates across immigrants’ origins and lengths of stay are as yet unavailable. Furthermore, we estimate the employment gap as the differential in the number of employed weeks in the year between immigrants and natives, which has not been done before – this contrasts with the employment probability gap usually estimated in the literature. We also estimate the immigrant–native earnings gap across gender, across the entire earnings distribution, across continents of nationality and across lengths of stay. Estimates across the earnings distribution are also a novel contribution, as these are also as yet unavailable in the literature. Our main conclusion is that both the immigrant–native employment and earnings gaps vary across gender, continents of nationality and lengths of stay. Immigrant women earn more than native women throughout the distribution. The earnings gap is positive throughout for females: smaller at the bottom, larger at the top and relatively constant in the middle of the distribution. In contrast, it increases monotonically across the distribution for males: it is negative at the bottom and positive at the top. In the main, immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe suffer larger employment and earnings penalties, which are reduced as their length of stay increases. In contrast, immigrants from North America have a more favourable labour market experience.     

MIGRATION into the WELFARE STATE: tax and migration competition

Despite big gains from easing restrictions on international labor mobility, liberalizing migration flows is not pursued unilaterally or negotiated among countries in a way that international trade negotiations are pursued. Among several key explanations is the fiscal burden imposed by immigration on native-born. The paper focuses on a central tension faced by policy makers in countries that receive migrants from lower wage countries. Such countries are typically high productivity and capital rich, and the resulting high wages attract both skilled and unskilled migrants. A generous welfare state may attract low-skill migration deter skilled migration, since it is likely to be accompanied by higher redistributive taxes. Assuming that a group of host countries faces an upward supply of immigrants, the analysis demonstrates that tax competition does not indeed lead to a race to the bottom; competition may lead to higher taxes than coordination. There exists a fiscal externality (fiscal leakage) that causes tax rates (on both labor and capital), and the volume of migration (of both skill types), to be higher in the competitive regime than in the coordinated regime.     

When should firms share credit with employees? Evidence from anonymously managed mutual funds

We study the choice between named and anonymous mutual fund managers. We argue that fund families weigh the benefits of naming managers against the cost associated with their increased future bargaining power. Named managers receive more media mentions, have greater inflows, and suffer less return diversion due to within family cross-subsidization, but departures of named managers reduce net flows. Naming managers became less common between 1993 and 2004. This was especially true in the asset classes and cities most affected by the hedge fund boom, which increased outside opportunities for, and the cost of retaining, successful named managers.     

Public Support for Older Disabled People: Evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing on Receipt of Disability Benefits and Social Care Subsidy

In England, state support for older people with disabilities consists of a national system of non‐means‐tested cash disability benefits and a locally administered means‐tested system of social care. Evidence on how the combination of the two systems targets those in most need is lacking. We estimate a latent factor structural equation model of disability and receipt of one or both forms of support. The model integrates the measurement of disability and its influence on receipt of state support, allowing for the socio‐economic gradient in disability, and adopts income and wealth constructs appropriate to each part of the model. We find that receipt of each form of support rises as disability increases, with a strong concentration on the most disabled, especially for local‐authority‐funded care. The overlap between the two programmes is confined to the most disabled. Less than half of recipients of local‐authority‐funded care also receive a disability benefit; a third of those in the top 10 per cent of the disability distribution receive neither form of support. Despite being non‐means‐tested, disability benefits display a degree of income and wealth targeting, as a consequence of the socio‐economic gradient in disability and likely disability benefit claims behaviour. The scope for improving income/wealth targeting of disability benefits by means testing them, as some have suggested, is thus less than might be expected.     

The Take‐Up of Multiple Means‐Tested Benefits by British Pensioners: Evidence from the Family Resources Survey

Non‐take‐up of means‐tested benefits among pensioners is of long‐standing concern. It has assumed increased importance from October 2003 with the introduction of the new means‐tested pension credit to which about half of pensioners are expected to be entitled. We use Family Resources Survey data from April 1997 to March 2000 to investigate patterns of pensioner take‐up of income support (IS) (subsequently renamed the minimum income guarantee and now subsumed in pension credit), housing benefit (HB) and council tax benefit (CTB). Although 36 per cent of pensioners in our sample failed to claim their entitlements to at least one of these benefits, only 16 per cent failed to claim amounts worth more than 10 per cent of their disposable income. Generally, take‐up is high where entitlement is high. But there are exceptions which may reflect the claims process and/or a greater degree of social stigma associated with IS than with HB or CTB.     

The Economic Cost of Growing Up Poor: Estimating the GDP Loss Associated with Child Poverty*

One of the motivations for the UK government's target to reduce (and eventually eliminate) child poverty is the perception of a significant long‐term economic cost of growing up in poverty. This perception arises from the observation that individuals who experience poverty in their childhood earn less as adults, are less likely to be in employment, are more likely to engage in criminal or anti‐social activities and are more likely to experience poor health and lower life satisfaction. This paper quantifies these effects, and expresses them in terms of GDP losses to the nation. We begin by focusing on lost earnings that arise from poorer skills and reduced employment opportunities, and then move on to the wider costs associated with the higher crime rates, poorer health and reduced well‐being that are linked with growing up poor. We find a sizeable economic cost, with the cost of growing up in poverty amounting to at least 1 per cent of GDP.     

The effects of private equity and venture capital on sales and employment growth in small and medium-sized businesses

We study the effects private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) financing have on small and mid-sized single entity business establishments from 1995 to 2009. We focus on single entity establishments to cleanly examine the impact of PE and VC financing on establishments’ organic growth. This study reveals that PE and VC financing have positive impacts on single entity business establishments’ net sales and employment growth. The impact of PE financing on establishments’ growth is slower and smaller than VC financing. However, we find that the benefit of PE financing lasts longer than VC financing. We also find that ethnic minority, female, and foreign business owners are less likely to receive PE and VC financing. Finally, we find evidence that although establishments with government contracts are more likely to receive PE and VC financing, those contracts fail to produce marginal post-funding growth and employment benefits.     

The Economics of a Temporary VAT Cut*

This paper analyses the likely implications of the temporary cut in VAT in the UK to 15 per cent, with a return to 17.5 per cent in place for the end of 2009. We distinguish between the income effect of the cut and the (intertemporal) substitution effect. The former is likely to be small because the change in lifetime income is minimal. The second effect is likely to be much more important because the reduction in the price of goods bought in 2009 compared with 2010 gives an incentive to increase consumer spending this year. With an elasticity of intertemporal substitution of about 1, we would expect the cut in VAT to boost consumer spending by about 1.2 per cent over what it would otherwise be. The distributional consequences of the VAT cut are regressive because goods subject to VAT tend to be luxuries. Unlike a cut in interest rates, there is no difference in the distributional consequences for borrowers compared with savers.     

Cross-country differences in the contribution of future migration to old-age financing

As life expectancy increases and fertility declines, population aging puts pressure on the financing of welfare states in Europe and other developed countries. Given that immigrant workers are younger than the domestic population, a continuous flow of immigrants reduces the old-age dependency ratio and improves financing. Existing general equilibrium estimates of the public finance contribution of migration, performed with different models, are not comparable across countries and sometimes differ even in sign. We use the same overlapping-generations model with a detailed representation of institutions and labor market activity to provide comparable estimates of the impact of immigration on public finance in four European countries. We find that future projected immigration flows are equivalent to 14.3 % points labor income taxes in Austria, 7.3 points in Germany, 6.2 points in the UK and 1.7 points in Poland in 2060. These differences are due to the projected volume of immigration and institutional setups, among other factors. For comparable volumes of immigration, future flows have largest impact in Germany and smallest in the UK.