IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eca/wpaper/2013-264399.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Corporate Income Tax Rates Cuts Create Jobs? The European Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Antonio Estache
  • Brigitta Gersey

Abstract

The paper assesses the impact of changes in the effective corporate tax rate on the unemployment rate in Europe between 1999 and 2014. The results suggest, for this sample, that a 1% decrease in the effective tax rate was associated with a 0.34% increase in the unemployment rate on average. This means that, in the region, lower corporate income taxes were linked to the replacement of labor by capital. This this substitution effect has been stronger than the output effect conservative administrations tend to focus on in their motivation for the rates cut. The substitution may be needed to achieved longer run growth payoffs, but these results suggest that transition cost are likely to be paid by workers and these should be addressed jointly with the corporate tax cut decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Estache & Brigitta Gersey, 2018. "Do Corporate Income Tax Rates Cuts Create Jobs? The European Experience," Working Papers ECARES 2018-01, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/264399
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/264399/3/2018-01-ESTACHE_GERSEY-do.pdf
    File Function: Œuvre complète ou partie de l'œuvre
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nadja Dwenger & Pia Rattenhuber & Viktor Steiner, 2019. "Sharing the Burden? Empirical Evidence on Corporate Tax Incidence," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 20(4), pages 107-140, November.
    2. Arnold C. Harberger, 1962. "The Incidence of the Corporation Income Tax," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(3), pages 215-215.
    3. Kim, Jaewon, 2011. "The Effects of Trade on Unemployment: Evidence from 20 OECD countries," Research Papers in Economics 2011:19, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    4. Nicodeme, Gaetan, 2001. "Computing effective corporate tax rates: comparisons and results," MPRA Paper 3808, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Andrea Bassanini & Romain Duval, 2007. "The determinants of unemployment across OECD countries: Reassessing the role of policies and institutions," OECD Economic Studies, OECD Publishing, vol. 2006(1), pages 7-86.
    6. Horst Feldmann, 2011. "The Unemployment Puzzle of Corporate Taxation," Public Finance Review, , vol. 39(6), pages 743-769, November.
    7. Gravelle, Jennifer, 2013. "Corporate Tax Incidence: Review of General Equilibrium Estimates and Analysis," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 66(1), pages 185-214, March.
    8. Alison Felix, 2007. "Passing the burden: corporate tax incidence in open economies," Regional Research Working Paper RRWP 07-01, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    9. Karel Mertens & Morten O. Ravn, 2013. "The Dynamic Effects of Personal and Corporate Income Tax Changes in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1212-1247, June.
    10. Alvarez Martinez, Maria Teresa & Barrios, Salvador & Bettendorf, Leon & d'Andria, Diego & Gesualdo, Maria & Loretz, Simon & Pontikakis, Dimitrios & Pycroft, Jonathan, 2016. "A New Calibration for CORTAX: A computable general equilibrium model for simulating corporate tax reforms," JRC Working Papers on Taxation & Structural Reforms 2016-09, Joint Research Centre.
    11. Clausing, Kimberly A., 2013. "Who Pays the Corporate Tax in a Global Economy?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 66(1), pages 151-184, March.
    12. Andrea Bassanini & Romain Duval, 2006. "The Determinants of Unemployment across OECD Countries," Post-Print halshs-00120584, HAL.
    13. Michael P. Devereux & Rachel Griffith & Alexander Klemm, 2002. "Corporate income tax reforms and international tax competition [‘Do domestic firms benefit from direct foreign investment? Evidence from Venezuela’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 17(35), pages 449-495.
    14. Siegloch, Sebastian, 2014. "Employment Effects of Local Business Taxes," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100325, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    15. Aras Zirgulis & Tadas Šarapovas, 2017. "Impact of corporate taxation on unemployment," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3), pages 412-426, May.
    16. Leon Bettendorf & Albert van der Horst & Ruud A. De Mooij, 2009. "Corporate Tax Policy and Unemployment in Europe: An Applied General Equilibrium Analysis," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(9), pages 1319-1347, September.
    17. Andrea Bassanini & Romain Duval, 2006. "Employment Patterns in OECD Countries: Reassessing the Role of Policies and Institutions," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 35, OECD Publishing.
    18. R. Alison Felix, 2007. "Passing the Burden: Corporate Tax Incidence in Open Economies," LIS Working papers 468, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    19. María T. Álvarez-Martínez & Salvador Barrios & Diego d'Andría & Maria Gesualdo & Jonathan Pycroft & Dimitrios Pontikakis, 2016. "Falling Corporate Tax Rates in the EU: Is there a case for harmonisation?," JRC Working Papers on Taxation & Structural Reforms 2016-04, Joint Research Centre.
    20. Michael P Devereux, 2007. "The Impact of Taxation on the Location of Capital, Firms and Profit: a Survey of Empirical Evidence," Working Papers 0702, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.
    21. Bouzid,Bechir Naier, 2016. "Dynamic relationship between corruption and youth unemployment : empirical evidences from a system GMM approach," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7842, The World Bank.
    22. Xiaobing Shuai & Christine Chmura, 2013. "The Effect of State Corporate Income Tax Rate Cuts on Job Creation," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 48(3), pages 183-193, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Antonio Estache & Beni Kouevi Gath, 2019. "Corporate Income Taxes and (Un-)Employment in the OECD," Working Papers ECARES 2019-11, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Antonio Estache & Beni Kouevi Gath, 2019. "Corporate Income Taxes and (Un-)Employment in the OECD," Working Papers ECARES 2019-11, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    2. Clemens Fuest & Andreas Peichl & Sebastian Siegloch, 2018. "Do Higher Corporate Taxes Reduce Wages? Micro Evidence from Germany," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(2), pages 393-418, February.
    3. Nelly Exbrayat & Benny Geys, 2016. "Economic Integration, Corporate Tax Incidence and Fiscal Compensation," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(11), pages 1792-1811, November.
    4. Liu, Li & Altshuler, Rosanne, 2013. "Measuring the Burden of the Corporate Income Tax Under Imperfect Competition," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 66(1), pages 215-237, March.
    5. Thomas K. Bauer & Tanja Kasten & Lars-H. R. Siemers, 2017. "Business Taxation and Wages: Redistribution and Asymmetric Effects," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201732, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    6. Horst Feldmann, 2011. "The Unemployment Puzzle of Corporate Taxation," Public Finance Review, , vol. 39(6), pages 743-769, November.
    7. Sacchidananda Mukherjee & Shivani Badola, 2023. "Macroeconomic Implications of Changes in Corporate Tax Rates: A Review," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 56(1), pages 20-41, March.
    8. Fuest, Clemens & Peichl, Andreas & Siegloch, Sebastian, 2015. "Do Higher Corporate Taxes Reduce Wages?," IZA Discussion Papers 9606, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Li, Guangzhong & Wu, Cen & Zheng, Ying, 2020. "Employee protection and the tax sensitivity of wages: International evidence," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    10. Samiksha Agarwal & Lekha Chakraborty, 2019. "Business Taxation in an Emerging Economy: Analysing Corporate Tax Incidence," Review of European Studies, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 11(2), pages 1-8, December.
    11. Kenneth J. McKenzie & Ergete Ferede, 2017. "The Incidence of the Corporate Income Tax on Wages: Evidence from Canadian Provinces," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 10(7), April.
    12. Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato & Owen Zidar, 2016. "Who Benefits from State Corporate Tax Cuts? A Local Labor Markets Approach with Heterogeneous Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2582-2624, September.
    13. Nadja Dwenger & Pia Rattenhuber & Viktor Steiner, 2019. "Sharing the Burden? Empirical Evidence on Corporate Tax Incidence," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 20(4), pages 107-140, November.
    14. Nils aus dem Moore, 2014. "Shifting the Burden of Corporate Taxes: Heterogeneity in Direct Wage Incidence," Ruhr Economic Papers 0531, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    15. aus dem Moore, Nils, 2014. "Shifting the Burden of Corporate Taxes: Heterogeneity in Direct Wage Incidence," Ruhr Economic Papers 531, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    16. R. Alison Felix & James R. Hines, 2022. "Corporate taxes and union wages in the United States," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 29(6), pages 1450-1494, December.
    17. Knaisch, Jonas & Pöschel, Carla, 2021. "Corporate Tax Incidence and Wages: A Meta-Regression Analysis," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 262, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre, revised 2021.
    18. Julien Martin & Florian Mayneris, 2022. "Revue de littérature sur l’incidence fiscale des taxes sur les entreprises," CIRANO Project Reports 2022rp-06, CIRANO.
    19. Peichl, Andreas & Fuest, Clemens & Siegloch, Sebastian, 2013. "Wage Incidence of Local Corporate Taxation - Micro Evidence from Germany," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79916, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Céline Azémar & R. Glenn Hubbard, 2015. "Country characteristics and the incidence of capital income taxation on wages: An empirical assessment," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(5), pages 1762-1802, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    corporate taxation; unemployment rate; fixed effects; EU panel data;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/264399. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benoit Pauwels (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/arulbbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.