1,721,020 research outputs found
Taxation and Incomplete Contracts
No full textThis paper analyzes the impact of taxation on economic efficiency when
contracts are incomplete, firms operate in a perfect competitive market
and can choose between integrated or non-integrated governance to cope
with contract incompleteness. Taxation reduces incentives to pursue intrafirm
coordination, thus the efficiency of firm’s production process under
non-integration. This is not the case under integration, since production
decisions are transferred to the Headquarters, at a fixed integration cost.
Taxation may then induce firms to change their organization at the industry
equilibrium. We show that a tax that induces firms to choose integration
rather than non-integration may serve a corrective function if
integration costs and market prices are not too high
International commodity taxation in the presence of unemployment
No full textIn this paper, we evaluate the impact of commodity tax competition on welfare and employment under the
destination and origin principles, when the labor market is imperfectly competitive owing to a binding fixed
wage. Our main finding is that commodity taxation causes an employment externality whose signs may be
opposite under the two principles. While tax competition leads to inefficient tax rates under both principles,
we also prove that the origin principle guarantees lower unemployment and higher welfare when the fixed
wage is high. Finally, we show that the employment externality still exists in a standard union model of wage
determination
Political Instability and Labor Market Institutions
No full textThis paper investigates the relationship between political instability and labor market institutions. We develop a theoretical model in which some features of the political process, by reducing the future yields of policy interventions, induce an incumbent government to choose labor market institutions that create wage rents and divert resources from public good provision and social insurance. We test these predictions empirically using panel data for 21 OECD countries for the period 1985-2006. We find strong evidence that political turnover and political polarization – our measures of political instability – are associated with a more regulated labor market, lower unemployment benefit replacement rates, and a smaller tax wedge on labor. We show also that there are strong complementarities between different dimensions of political instability, and evaluate their impact on labour market institutions across countries
Essays on Taxation and Market Imperfections
No full textLa mia tesi di dottorato è una raccolta di tre articoli che considerano l'efficienza di strumenti diversi di tassazione in presenza di imperfezioni nei mercati dei fattori e nei processi produttivi.My dissertation is a collection of three essays that consider the efficiency of different tax instruments in the presence of imperfections in the factor markets and in production processes
The Cultural Transmission of Environmental Values: A Comparative Approach
No full textThis paper investigates the hypothesis that individual environmental attitudes are partly determined by a cultural component.
Our analysis tackles this issue both theoretically and empirically. In the theoretical section of the paper, we describe a model of
intergenerational transmission of cultural traits. In the empirical section, we use survey data from the European Values Study, to empirically
identify this cultural component in environmental attitudes. We use a comparative approach that exploits variations associated
with European migration flows. Our findings suggest that culture has a persistent and statistically significant impact on the environmental
values of migrants: differences in environmental attitudes among migrants can be traced back to social values that persist in their
countries of origin. We also show that environmental attitudes are resilient to incentives derived from the external environment: environmental
conditions migrants have been exposed to in their countries of origin do not have a significant impact on their preferences
when living in the host country. Our empirical findings are robust to a number of alternative assumptions and present interesting dimensions
of heterogeneity concerning the cultural transmission process. These results imply that in the presence of multiple environmental
problems that require collective action, comprehending the driving forces behind the formation of an environmental culture is critical to
effective policy formation
Collective Agreements, Wages and Firms’ Cohorts: Evidence from Central Europe
No full textUsing a large matched employer-employee dataset, the authors investigate the impact of company and industry collective bargaining agreements on wages in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (CE3). They also examine the changing characteristics of the union wage premium in different cohorts of establishments. Their results challenge the common idea of weak unions in the CE3 by revealing a union wage premium whose characteristics depend on the level at which collective bargaining occurs. They find that industry agreements increase wages for low-skilled workers, while company agreements increase medium and high skilled wages. Their second finding is that the union wage premium is unevenly distributed between cohorts, with substantial cross-country variation. Wage premiums are concentrated in the transitional cohorts in the Czech Republic and Poland and, to a lesser extent, in the pre-transitional cohort in Hungary
Political Instability and Labour Market Institutions
No full textThis paper investigates the relationship between political instability and labour market institutions. We develop a theoretical model in which political instability creates incentives for a government to introduce labour market regulation in the economy. The distortionary effect of regulation on unemployment effectively puts a constraint on the design of fiscal and public policies. We empirically investigate these predictions using panel data for 21 OECD countries for the period 1985–2006. Our results are consistent with the view that political instability is associated with more regulated labour markets, lower labour taxation, and lower unemployment benefit replacement rates
The wage return to graduate in Italian small-town universities
No full textIn this paper we use a representative sample drawn from the `Indagine Statistica sull' Inserimento Professionale dei Laureati' by the Italian National Statistical Institute and data by the Italian Ministry of Education to look at the wage returns from attendance to a regional university (i.e. not located in a metropolitan area) three years after graduation. Our results show that, after accounting for observed characteristics of individuals and colleges, a wage premium is associated to graduating in a regional university. This finding may be interpreted as regional universities enhancing the local human capital stock or creating specific skills needed by the local economic environment
Beyond the Labor Income Tax Wedge: The Unemployment-Reducing Effect of Tax Progressivity
No full textIn this paper, we argue that, 1 for a given overall level of labour income taxation, a more progressive tax schedule increases employment. From a theoretical point of view, higher progressivity increases overall employment through a wage moderating effect and also because employment of low-paid workers is more elastic to wages. We test these theoretical predictions on a panel of 21 OECD countries over 1998–2008. Controlling for the burden of taxation at the average wage, our estimates suggest that a more progressive tax schedule reduces the unemployment rate and increases the employment rate. These findings are confirmed when we account for the potential endogeneity of both average taxation and progressivity. Overall, our results suggest that policy-makers should not only focus on the detrimental effects of tax progressivity on in-work effort, but also consider the employment-enhancing effects
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