Nonlinear Employment Effects of Tax Policy

We study the nonlinear propagation mechanism of tax policy in a heterogeneous-agent equilibrium business cycle model with search frictions in the labor market and an extensive margin of employment adjustment. The model exhibits endogenous job destruction and endogenous hiring standards in the form of occasionally-binding zero-surplus constraints. After parameterizing the model using U.S. data, we find that the dynamic response of employment to a temporary change in the labor income tax is highly nonlinear, displaying sizable asymmetries and state dependence. Notably, the response to a tax rate cut is at least twice as large in a recession as in an expansion.