IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mol/ecsdps/esdp03011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Average Labor Taxes and Unemployment: Evidence from Italian Regions

Author

Listed:
  • Brunello, Giorgio
  • Lupi, Claudio
  • Ordine, Patrizia

Abstract

By focusing on the Italian experience, we ask whether the relationship between labor taxes and unemployment varies across regions. In spite of similar national labor market institutions, we show that this relationship is significantly stronger in the highly industrialized North than in the less developed South, where unemployment is much higher. An important source of variation in the regional responsiveness of unemployment originates from the fact that regional gross wages in the North increase more than in the South in response to a hike in labor taxes.

Suggested Citation

  • Brunello, Giorgio & Lupi, Claudio & Ordine, Patrizia, 2003. "Average Labor Taxes and Unemployment: Evidence from Italian Regions," Economics & Statistics Discussion Papers esdp03011, University of Molise, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:mol:ecsdps:esdp03011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://web.unimol.it/progetti/repec/mol/ecsdps/ESDP03011.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blanchard, Olivier & Wolfers, Justin, 2000. "The Role of Shocks and Institutions in the Rise of European Unemployment: The Aggregate Evidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(462), pages 1-33, March.
    2. Layard, Richard & Nickell, Stephen & Jackman, Richard, 2005. "Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199279173.
    3. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5571 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Giorgio Brunello & Daniela Sonedda, 2007. "Progressive taxation and wage setting when unions strategically interact," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(1), pages 127-140, January.
    5. Holmlund, B. & Kolm, A.S., 1995. "Progressive Taxation, Wage Setting and Unemployment - Theory and Swedish Evidence," Papers 15, Uppsala - Working Paper Series.
    6. Jean-Paul Fitoussi & David Jestaz & Edmund S. Phelps & Gylfi Zoega, 2000. "Roots of the Recent Recoveries: Labor Reforms or Private Sector Forces?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(1), pages 237-311.
    7. Peter Pedroni, 1999. "Critical Values for Cointegration Tests in Heterogeneous Panels with Multiple Regressors," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 61(S1), pages 653-670, November.
    8. Michael Bruno, 1984. "Raw Materials, Profits, and the Productivity Slowdown," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(1), pages 1-29.
    9. Koskela, Erkki & Vilmunen, Jouko, 1996. "Tax progression is good for employment in popular models of trade union behaviour," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 65-80, August.
    10. Corneo, Giacomo & Lucifora, Claudio, 1997. "Wage formation under union threat effects: Theory and empirical evidence," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 265-292, September.
    11. Steve Nickell & Jan van Ours, 2000. "The Netherlands and the United Kingdom: a European unemployment miracle?," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 15(30), pages 136-180.
    12. Francesco Daveri & Guido Tabellini, 2000. "Unemployment, growth and taxation in industrial countries," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 15(30), pages 48-104.
    13. Ordine, Patrizia, 1995. "Wage drift and minimum contractual wage: Theoretical interrelationship and empirical evidence for Italy," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 335-357, December.
    14. repec:bla:obuest:v:61:y:1999:i:0:p:653-70 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Brunello, Giorgio & Lupi, Claudio & Ordine, Patrizia, 2001. "Widening differences in Italian regional unemployment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 103-129, January.
    16. Pissarides, Christopher A., 1998. "The impact of employment tax cuts on unemployment and wages; The role of unemployment benefits and tax structure," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 155-183, January.
    17. Booth,Alison L., 1994. "The Economics of the Trade Union," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521468398, September.
    18. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/5571 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Marek Gora & Artur Radziwill & Agnieszka Sowa & Mateusz Walewski, 2006. "Tax Wedge and Skills: Case of Poland in International Perspective," CASE Network Reports 0064, CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research.
    2. Kees Folmer, 2009. "Why do macro wage elasticities diverge?," CPB Memorandum 224.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    3. Marc van der Steeg & Roel van Elk & Dinand Webbink, 2012. "Does intensive coaching reduce school dropout?," CPB Discussion Paper 224.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    4. Kees Folmer, 2009. "Why do macro wage elasticities diverge? A meta analysis," CPB Discussion Paper 122, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    5. Kees Folmer, 2009. "Why do macro wage elasticities diverge?," CPB Memorandum 224, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

    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. Giorgio Brunello & Claudio Lupi & Patrizia Ordine, 2005. "Labor Taxes in Local Labor Markets: Evidence from Italian Regions," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 64(1), pages 29-54, September.
    2. Claudio Lupi & Giorgio Brunello, 2001. "Beyond National Institutions: Labor Taxes and Regional Unemployment in Italy," CESifo Working Paper Series 414, CESifo.
    3. Etienne Lehmann & Claudio Lucifora & Simone Moriconi & Bruno Van der Linden, 2016. "Beyond the labour income tax wedge: the unemployment-reducing effect of tax progressivity," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 23(3), pages 454-489, June.
    4. Bertil Holmlund, 2002. "Labor Taxation in Search Equilibrium with Home Production," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 3(4), pages 415-430, November.
    5. Albert Jan Hummel, 2021. "Unemployment and tax design," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 21-061/VI, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Boeters, Stefan, 2002. "Tax Progressivity and the Trade Union's Fallback-Option," ZEW Discussion Papers 02-15, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    7. Goerke, Laszlo & Madsen, Jakob B., 2003. "Earnings-Related Unemployment Benefits in a Unionised Economy," IZA Discussion Papers 701, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Sinko, Pekka, 2002. "Labour Taxation, Tax Progression and Job Matching - Comparative Alternative Models of Wage Setting," Discussion Papers 285, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    9. Stephen Nickell, 2003. "Labour Market Institutions and Unemployment in OECD Countries," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 1(2), pages 13-26, October.
    10. Nickell, Stephen & Nunziata, Luca & Ochel, Wolfgang & Quintini, Glenda, 2001. "The Beveridge curve, unemployment and wages in the OECD from the 1960s to the 1990s - preliminary version," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 20113, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Pekka Sinko, 2007. "Labour taxation, job creation and job destruction—Focusing on the role of wage setting," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 14(5), pages 583-604, October.
    12. García, José Ramón & Sala, Hector, 2008. "The tax system incidence on unemployment: A country-specific analysis for the OECD economies," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 1232-1245, November.
    13. Albert Jan Hummel, 2021. "Unemployment and Tax Design," CESifo Working Paper Series 9177, CESifo.
    14. Costain, James S. & Reiter, Michael, 2008. "Business cycles, unemployment insurance, and the calibration of matching models," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1120-1155, April.
    15. Michael Bräuninger, 2005. "Social Security, Unemployment, and Growth," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 12(4), pages 423-434, August.
    16. Doménech, Rafael & Garcí­a, José Ramón, 2008. "Unemployment, taxation and public expenditure in OECD economies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 202-217, March.
    17. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala & Dennis J. Snower, 2010. "Phillips Curves And Unemployment Dynamics: A Critique And A Holistic Perspective," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(1), pages 1-51, February.
    18. Ron Smith & Gylfi Zoega, 2004. "Global Shocks and Unemployment Adjustment," Economics wp24_smith, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    19. Van der Linden, Bruno, 1998. "Fighting unemployment without worsening povety: Basic income versus reductions of social security contributions," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 1999028, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES), revised 00 Oct 1999.
    20. H Buscher & C Dreger & R Ramos & J Surinach, 2009. "The Impact of Institutions on the Employment Performance in European Labour Markets," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 14(1), pages 17-34, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    regional unemployment; labor taxes.;

    JEL classification:

    • J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General

    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:mol:ecsdps:esdp03011. 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: Claudio Lupi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dsmolit.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.