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Payroll Taxes, Social Insurance, And Business Cycles

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  • Michael C. Burda
  • Mark Weder

Abstract

Payroll taxes represent a major distortionary in uence of governments on labor markets. This paper examines the role of payroll taxation and the social safety net for cyclical uctuations in a nonmonetary economy with labor market frictions and unemployment insurance, when the latter is only imperfectly related to search effort. A balanced social insurance budget renders gross wages more rigid over the cycle and, as a result, strengthens the modelÂ’s endogenous propagation mechanism. For conventional calibrations, the model generates a negatively sloped Beveridge curve as well as substantial volatility and persistence of vacancies and unemployment.
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  • Michael C. Burda & Mark Weder, 2016. "Payroll Taxes, Social Insurance, And Business Cycles," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 438-467, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jeurec:v:14:y:2016:i:2:p:438-467
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/jeea.2016.14.issue-2
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

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