Progressive Taxation Under Centralised Wage Setting

The study reconsiders the effects of tax progression in imperfectly competitive labour markets. Allowing for the individual supply of working hours, we show that the results derived in the standard model of decentralised wage bargaining do not hold if the wage setting is centralised or highly coordinated. We show that increased progression is more likely to harm employment if either i) the initial tax system is progressive or ii) the wage setting is centralised or co-ordinated. If the wage setting institutions are centralised or strongly co-ordinated, increased progression may be bad for employment even when departing from a proportional tax system.