Taxation, social welfare, and labor market frictions

B-Tier
Journal: European Economic Review
Year: 2023
Volume: 151
Issue: C

Authors (4)

Epstein, Brendan (not in RePEc) Nunn, Ryan (not in RePEc) Orak, Musa (Federal Reserve Board (Board o...) Patel, Elena (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

0.503 = (α=2.01 / 4 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Taking taxation inefficiencies as given, a well-known public finance result is that in partial equilibrium the elasticity of taxable income (ETI) is a sufficient statistic for the deadweight loss (DWL) from labor income taxation. We revisit this result using a general equilibrium macroeconomic framework with labor search frictions. Our theory parses out the extent to which search frictions in and of themselves can distort the DWL-ETI relationship. Numerical analysis suggests that DWL is nearly 10 percent above the ETI given search frictions, only. Accounting for externalities can drive this figure up to about 20 percent, and accounting unemployment benefits can increase this number up to nearly 40 percent. Parsing out these effects both analytically and quantitatively yields novel results that contribute jointly to the public finance and macroeconomic literatures.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:eecrev:v:151:y:2023:i:c:s001429212200232x
Journal Field
General
Author Count
4
Added to Database
2026-01-26