Nada Eissa Henrik Jacobsen Kleven Claus Thustrup Kreiner
Abstract
A large literature evaluating the welfare effects of taxation has examined the role of the labor supply elasticity, and has shown that the estimated welfare effects are highly sensitive to its size. A common feature of this literature is its exclusive focus on hours worked and the associated marginal tax rate. An emerging consensus among public finance and labor economists, however, is that labor supply is more responsive along the extensive margin (participation) than along the intensive margin (hours worked). To understand the implications of the participation decision for the welfare analysis of tax reform, this paper embeds the extensive margin in an explicit welfare theoretic framework. It is shown that the participation effect on welfare is created by a different tax wedge than the marginal-tax wedge relevant for hours of work. This difference is due to non-linearities and discontinuities in tax-transfer schemes, features that are particularly important for the welfare evaluation of tax reforms affecting the bottom of the income distribution. We apply our framework to examine the labor supply and welfare effects for single mothers in the United States following four tax acts passed in 1986, 1990, 1993, and 2001. Our simulations show that each of the four tax acts reduced the tax burden on low-income single mothers, and created substantial welfare gains. We note three features of the welfare effects. First, we find that welfare gains are almost exclusively concentrated along the extensive margin of labor supply. Second, welfare effects along the extensive margin tend to dominate those along the intensive margin, even when the two labor supply elasticities are of similar size. This occurs because the welfare effect on each margin is created by a different tax wedge. Finally, ignoring the composition of the labor supply elasticity may reverse the sign of the welfare effect. In the welfare evaluation of tax reform, we conclude that the composition of the total labor supply elasticity is as important as its size.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
10935.
Length: Date of creation: Nov 2004 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10935
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
V. Joseph Hotz, 2003.
"The Earned Income Tax Credit,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, pages 141-198
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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