Critical remarks on Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century

This article discusses the central macroeconomic claims that are made in Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-first Century. The article aims to show that Piketty’s contentions are not only logically flawed but also contradicted by his own data.     

New estimates of labour supply elasticities for married women in Canada 1996–2005

In this article, we estimate income and substitution labour supply and participation elasticities for Canadian married women using data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics 1996–2005. We use the Canadian Tax and Credit Simulator (CTaCS) and detailed information on the structure of income at the household level to compute the marginal tax rates faced by each individual. We then use these marginal tax rates to compute net own-wage, spouse-wage, and nonlabour income. We show how the magnitude of the estimated elasticities varies depending on whether net or gross wages and income are used in the estimation procedure, and quantify biases caused by using average tax rates instead of marginal tax rates. Finally, because marginal tax rates vary significantly over the sample, we use quantile regressions to compare elasticities at different points of the hours distribution. Overall, our results show that public policies now have, on average, less scope for influencing hours of work than 10 years ago. However, the quantile results show that wives working fewer hours per week are more sensitive to changes in their own or spouses’ wages.     

Lower Tax Progression, Longer Hours and Higher Wages

The impact of tax reforms that decrease income tax progression is analysed in an equilibrium search model with wage bargaining and endogenous individual working hours. Working hours are either bargained together with the hourly wage (case 1) or determined solely by workers after bargaining over the wage (case 2). In both cases reducing tax progression increases working hours of employed and, more interestingly, unambiguously increases wages and unemployment. Wages and unemployment rise more and working hours and production less in case 1 compared to case 2, probably making case 2 countries best suited for such tax reforms.
JEL Classification : H 24; J 22; J 41     

COMMODITY TAX STRUCTURE AND INFORMAL ACTIVITY

Commodity tax structure affects the firm's choice between formality and informality. An increase in the specific tax rate, relative to an equivalent increase in ad valorem taxation, makes informality attractive to more firms. Formality becomes attractive at lower levels of profits under ad valorem taxation. For both the maximization of welfare subject to a revenue constraint and the unconstrained maximization of revenue, the optimal rate of specific taxation is zero.     

Outsourcing, Imports and Labour Demand

This paper examines the effects of purchased services and imported intermediate materials on the labour demand for different skills in German manufacturing sectors. We derive and estimate a factor demand system based on the generalised Box–Cox cost function nesting both the normalised quadratic and the translog functional form. We find that the impacts of output and capital growth are more important in explaining the demand for heterogeneous labour than substitution effects between labour and non–labour inputs. Similarly, the increasing use of both imported materials and purchased services is a consequence of output growth rather than input substitution.
JEL classification : J 23; O 33     

A Novel Sampling Strategy for Surveying High Net-Worth Individuals—A Pretest Application Using the Socio-Economic Panel

High-wealth individuals are typically underrepresented or completely missing in population surveys. The lack of comprehensive national registers on high-wealth individuals in many countries challenged previous attempts to remedy this under-representation. In a novel research design, we draw on public data on the shareholding structures of companies as a sampling frame. Our design builds on the empirical regularity that high-wealth individuals are likely to hold at least part of their assets in the form of shareholdings. Based on data from over 270 million companies worldwide, we select all individuals who are both German residents and registered shareholders of companies. In a pretest, we interviewed 124 households from a gross sample of 2,000 anchor persons. Our analysis shows that values of shareholdings from register data highly correlate with individual ranks in the wealth distribution, that the quality of personal information, particularly the residential address, is sufficiently high for subsequent interviewing, and that the approach can fill a major data and research gap in the study of high-wealth individuals.     

基于劳动力市场分割的劳动力流动模型的构建

国内外学者对于劳动力流动进行了大量深入的研究,成果颇丰.然而,由于历史的原因,我国在劳动力流动方面呈现出与其他国家不同的特性,目前,我国的劳动力市场尚未发展成熟,劳动力流动存在很严重的不合理现象.因此,结合我国的现实情况对其进行研究意义更加重大.本文试图结合以往学者的研究成果,构建基于劳动力市场分割的劳动力流动模型,对其进行深入的探讨,为实现劳动力的合理流动提供帮助.     

The most popular tax in Europe? Lessons from the Irish plastic bags levy

There have been occasional ad hoc efforts to influence consumer behaviour by the imposition of product taxes that reflect external costs imposed by such products that are not initially included in their price. In the spirit of this idea, in 2002 Ireland introduced a 15 Euro cent tax on plastic shopping bags, previously provided free of charge to customers at points of sale. The effect of the tax on the use of plastic bags in retail outlets has been dramatic—a reduction in use in the order of 90%, and an associated gain in the form of reduced littering and negative landscape effects. Costs of administration have been very low, amounting to about 3% of revenues, because it was possible to integrate reporting and collection into existing Value Added Tax reporting systems. Response from the main stakeholders: the public and the retail industry, has been overwhelmingly positive. Central to this acceptance has been a policy of extensive consultation with these stakeholders. The fact that a product tax can influence consumer behaviour significantly will be of interest to many policymakers in this area. This paper analyses the plastic bag levy success story and provides insights and general guidelines for other jurisdictions planning similar proposals.

Pollution control with imperfectly observable emissions

In this paper, a model of environmental regulation with imperfect monitoring of emissions is presented. The regulator can use linear output taxes and emission taxes to influence the pollution level of a risk-averse firm. In contrast to the perfect monitoring case, a tax mix will usually be optimal. The relative weight depends on the degree of risk aversion and monitoring imperfection, and on technological factors.     

社会“求富”心理分析

改革开放带来物质财富极大丰富的同时，也深刻影响着人们财富观的变化，“求富”意识在人们思想申产生，并逐渐泛化为一种社会心理。正确认识和引导好社会“求富”心理，是落实科学发展观的客观要求，封实现社会和谐，全面建设小康社会具有深远的现实意义。