Low-Wage Employment Subsidies in a Labor-Turnover Model of the 'Natural Rate'

This paper models two kinds of wage subsidy in a model of the natural rate having a continuum of workers ranked by their productivity - a flat wage subsidy and a graduated wage subsidy, each financed by a proportional payroll tax. In the small open economy case, with the graduation as specified, we show that both schemes expand employment throughout the distribution; for those whose productivity is sufficiently far below the mean, take-home pay is unambiguously up, though the tax financing lowers take-home pay at the mean and above.