We model a two sector economy with unionized labor markets and competitive product markets, where workers and unions care about their relative wages, and show that the presence of a relative wage concern could help generation a positive relationship between tax progressivity and wage pressure.

We study the empirical relationship between labor taxation and pretax wages in Italy. We find that higher tax progressivity increases pretax wages. To explain this result, we introduce in an informal way a relative wage effect and argue that the combination of this effect with the labor supply...

We analyze the positive and normative effects of a progressive tax on wages in a nonlinear New Keynesian DSGE model in the presence of demand and technology shocks. The non-linearity allows us to disentangle the effects of the progressive tax on the volatility and the level of macroeconomic...

How much additional tax revenue can the government generate by increasing labor income taxes? In this paper we provide a quantitative answer to this question, and study the importance of the progressivity of the tax schedule for the ability of the government to generate tax revenues. We develop...

How much additional tax revenue can the government generate by increasing the level of labor income taxes? In this paper, we argue that the degree of tax progressivity is a quantitatively important determinant of the answer to this question. To make this point, we develop a large scale...

Public finance solutions to high unemployment in Europe have often been advocated during the past years. With unemployment concentrated among the young and unskilled, it has been suggested that the reduction of social security contributions for low wage earnings, financed by a carbon tax, could...