In European Welfare States, low-skilled workers are typically unionized, while the wage formation of high-skilled workers is more competitive. To focus on this aspect, we analyze how flexible international outsourcing and labour taxation affect wage formation, employment and welfare in dual...

This paper investigates empirically the role of taxes on labor for the stock of expatriates and the migration flows of skilled workers. Given the increasing mobility of labour, especially of high-skilled people and expatriates, it is interesting to see to what extent labour income taxes and...

In a model with ex-ante homogenous households, earnings risk and a general earnings function, we derive the optimal linear labor tax rate and optimal linear education subsidies. The optimal income tax trades off social insurance against incentives to work and to invest in human capital....

This article studies the equivalence between labor and consumption taxes in a stochastic context, where the government can undertake an active portfolio management strategy by investing in both risk-free and risky assets. Using a two-period model we show that such taxes let consumers make the...

Recently, a voluminous literature estimating the taxable income elasticity has emerged as an important field in empirical public economics. However, to a large extent it is still unknown how the hourly wage rate, an important component of taxable income, reacts to changes in marginal tax rates....

This paper examines a static voting model for public pensions. The key premise is that families can internalize the cost and benefits of pay-as-you-go programs. A family realizes a net gain if its members collectively receive more in benefits in the current period than they pay in payroll taxes....

This paper analyzes optimal linear taxes on labor income and savings in a standard two-period life-cycle model with endogenous leisure demands in both periods and non-insurable income risks. Households are subject to skill shocks in both periods of the life-cycle. We allow for completely general...

What are the impacts of labor tax reform on wage setting and employment to keep the relative tax burden per low-skilled and high-skilled workers constant in the case of heterogenous domestic labor markets, i.e. imperfect competition in low-skilled labor and perfect competition in high-skilled...

Recent debates have suggested that taxation is very detrimental to labour force participation and employment. However, some countries - notably the Scandinavian - stand out as contradictions to this view since they have managed to sustain high labour force participation rate despite high tax...