Labour market responses to taxes: a structural approach

我们建议调查税收对就业、工作时间和工资的长期影响，对比法国和德国这些关键的劳动力市场结果。很少有研究在评估税收发生率时联合考虑这些边际。为了做到这一点，我们提出了一个现实的均衡模型，借鉴了微观经济求职文献中的最新贡献。它包括摩擦（工人和公司不会立即匹配），工资设定机制与谈判，从失业到就业的转变，以及工作到工作的转变。到目前为止，税收还没有包括在这些最先进的模型中，尽管它们在数量上很重要，而且在其发生率方面存在政策辩论。该模型的关键附加值在于，它允许我们共同研究就业、工作时间和工资对税收变化的反应，而标准的部分均衡方法被迫关闭（至少）其中一个反应来研究其他反应。该模型还提供了一个天然的工具，用于综合研究所有类型的劳动力市场税收：所得税、公司税、工资税和社会保障缴款。我们建议使用国内税率的变化（跨时间和地区）来估计模型。我们提出的结构模型不仅可以联合估计税收对劳动力市场的影响，还可以模拟潜在的税收改革及其对不同个体的福利影响。为此，我们允许个人在未被观察到的能力上存在差异，而企业在未被观察到的生产率上存在差异。因为它没有假设不同公司的工人是相似的，所以这个模型能够捕捉到这样一个观点：如果税收只影响某些公司，那么它们也可能只影响某些类型的工人。使用每个国家的具体估计参数，我们可以说明税收在解释法国和德国不同的劳动力市场结果方面的重要性。最后，我们讨论了潜在的劳动税改革，并描述了提高福利的税收政策。

We propose to investigate the long-run impact of taxes on employment, working hours and wages, contrasting these key labour market outcomes in France and Germany. Few studies have considered these margins jointly when assessing tax incidence. In order to do so, we offer to develop a realistic equilibrium model that draws on the most recent contributions in the microeconomic job search literature. It includes frictions (workers and firms do not match instantly), a wage-setting mechanism with bargaining, transitions from unemployment to employment, as well as job-to-job transitions. So far taxes have not been included in these state-of-the-art models, despite their quantitative importance and policy debates on their incidence. The key value-added of the model is to allow us to study jointly the responses of employment, working hours and wages to tax changes, while the standard partial equilibrium approaches are forced to shut down (at least) one of those responses to study the other ones. The model also offers a natural tool to study together all types of labour market taxes: income tax, corporate tax, payroll taxes and social security contributions. We propose to use within-country variation in tax rates (across time and regions) to estimate the model. The structural model we put forward allows not only a joint estimation of tax effects on the labour market, but also a simulation of potential tax reforms and their welfare effects for different individuals. To this end, we allow individuals to differ in unobserved ability and firms to differ according to unobserved productivity. Since it does not assume that workers in different firms are similar, the model is able to capture the idea that if taxes affect only certain firms, they may also affect only certain types of workers. Using the specific estimated parameters for each country, we can illustrate the importance of taxes in explaining different labour market outcomes in France and Germany. Finally, we discuss potential labour tax reforms and characterize welfare-enhancing tax policies.