IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpla/0509007.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Centralised Wage Setting Lead into Higher Taxation?

Author

Listed:
  • Pekka Sinko

    (Prime Minister's Office, Economic Council)

Abstract

This paper studies implications of centralised wage setting for the level of taxation and public expenditures in an analytical model with unionised labour markets. We extend the previous studies by allowing both demand and supply effects of labour. Also, in addition to the standard social planner approach, we consider a political economy set up, where the tax rate is chosen to maximise welfare of a median voter. Our results suggest that when working hours are endogenous, the relationship between the degree of centralisation and the labour tax rate is ambiguous. In particular, if the marginal utility from public provision is sufficiently low, centralised wage setting implies lower optimal tax rate on labour. This is due to a 'budgetary discipline effect', which reduces the optimal tax rate preferred by the median voter under centralised wage setting.

Suggested Citation

  • Pekka Sinko, 2005. "Does Centralised Wage Setting Lead into Higher Taxation?," Labor and Demography 0509007, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:0509007
    Note: Type of Document - pdf
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/lab/papers/0509/0509007.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sinko, Pekka & Kilponen, Juha, 2001. "Labour Taxation and the Degree of Centralisation in a Trade Union Model with Endogenous Labour Supply," Discussion Papers 250, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Daniele Checchi & Claudio Lucifora, 2002. "Unions and labour market institutions in Europe [‘Deunionisation, technical change and inequality’]," Economic Policy, CEPR;CES;MSH, vol. 17(35), pages 361-408.
    3. Erkki Koskela & Ronnie Schöb, 2002. "Alleviating Unemployment: The Case for Green Tax Reforms," Chapters, in: Lawrence H. Goulder (ed.), Environmental Policy Making in Economies with Prior Tax Distortions, chapter 20, pages 355-378, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Francesco Daveri & Guido Tabellini, 2000. "Unemployment, growth and taxation in industrial countries," Economic Policy, CEPR;CES;MSH, vol. 15(30), pages 48-104.
    5. Driffill, John & van der Ploeg, Frederick, 1993. "Monopoly Unions and the Liberalisation of International Trade," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(417), pages 379-385, March.
    6. Kiander, Jaakko & Holm, Pasi & Koskela, Erkki, 1995. "Unions, Labour supply and Structure of Taxation: Equal Tax Bases," Discussion Papers 110, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    7. Daniele Checchi & Claudio Lucifora, 2002. "Unions and labour market institutions in Europe," Departmental Working Papers 2002-16, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    8. Sinko, Pekka, 1999. "Taxation, Employment and the Environment - General Equilibrium Analysis with Unionised Labour Markets," Research Reports 54, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    9. Kiander, Jaakko & Kilponen, Juha & Vilmunen, Jouko, 2000. "Taxes, Growth and Unemployment in the OECD Countries - Does Collective Bargaininig Matter?," Discussion Papers 235, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    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. Michael Mitsopoulos, 2017. "Overtaxation of Private Sector Salaried Employment as a Key Impediment to the Recovery of Greece," Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Banking and Financial Institutions, in: Dimitrios D. Thomakos & Konstantinos I. Nikolopoulos (ed.), Taxation in Crisis, chapter 12, pages 289-336, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Michael MITSOPOULOS & Theodore PELAGIDIS, 2021. "Labor Taxation And Investment In Developed Countries. The Impact On Employment," Regional Science Inquiry, Hellenic Association of Regional Scientists, vol. 0(2), pages 13-31, June.

    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. Sinko, Pekka & Kilponen, Juha, 2003. "Does Centralised Wage Setting Lead into Higher Taxation?," Discussion Papers 314, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Sinko, Pekka & Kilponen, Juha, 2001. "Labour Taxation and the Degree of Centralisation in a Trade Union Model with Endogenous Labour Supply," Discussion Papers 250, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    3. Alfonso Arpaia & Giuseppe Carone, 2004. "Do labour taxes (and their composition) affect wages in the short and in the long run?," Public Economics 0411004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Kiander, Jaakko & Kilponen, Juha & Vilmunen, Jouko, 2004. "Labor taxation, public finance, and wage determination: evidence from OECD countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 983-999, November.
    5. Moriconi, Simone & Sato, Yasuhiro, 2009. "International commodity taxation in the presence of unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 939-949, August.
    6. Alfonso Arpaia & Giuseppe Carone, 2004. "Do labour taxes (and their composition) affect wages in the short and the long run? - Alfonso Arpaia and Giuseppe Carone," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 216, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    7. Tvrdon, Michal, 2007. "Labour Market Flexibility: the Case of Visegrad Countries," MPRA Paper 12314, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Erkki Koskela & Roope Uusitalo, 2003. "The Un-Intended Convergence: How the Finnish Unemployment Reached the European Level," CESifo Working Paper Series 878, CESifo.
    9. Marianna Belloc, 2009. "International Specialization and Labor Unions: Evidence from OECD Countries," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 34-50, February.
    10. Sinko, Pekka, 2004. "Progressive Taxation Under Centralised Wage Setting," Discussion Papers 349, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    11. Christopher A. Pissarides, 2003. "Unemployment in Britain: A European Success Story," CESifo Working Paper Series 981, CESifo.
    12. Philip Du Caju & Erwan Gautier & Daphne Momferatu & Melanie Ward-Warmedinger, 2009. "Institutional Features of Wage Bargaining in 23 European Countries, the US and Japan," Ekonomia, Cyprus Economic Society and University of Cyprus, vol. 12(2), pages 57-108, Winter.
    13. Cardullo, Gabriele & Conti, Maurizio & Sulis, Giovanni, 2015. "Sunk capital, unions and the hold-up problem: Theory and evidence from cross-country sectoral data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 253-274.
    14. William T. Dickens & Lorenz Goette & Erica L. Groshen & Steinar Holden & Julian Messina & Mark E. Schweitzer & Jarkko Turunen & Melanie E. Ward, 2007. "How Wages Change: Micro Evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 195-214, Spring.
    15. Céline Choulet, 2004. "Public employment and labour market performance: centralization wage setting effects," Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques v04036, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1).
    16. Sebastian Weber, 2006. "Labor Market Structures, Trade and their Effect on Unemployment: A Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Investigation," IHEID Working Papers 22-2006, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    17. Fournier, Jean-Marc & Koske, Isabell, 2013. "Public employment and earnings inequality: An analysis based on conditional and unconditional quantile regressions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 263-266.
    18. Magali Jaoul-Grammare & Isabelle Terraz, 2013. "A Causality Analysis of Economic Growth and Union Density in European Countries," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 27(4), pages 421-442, December.
    19. Lesch, Hagen, 2004. "Gewerkschaftlicher Organisationsgrad im internationalen Vergleich," IW-Trends – Vierteljahresschrift zur empirischen Wirtschaftsforschung, Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft (IW) / German Economic Institute, vol. 31(2), pages 5-15.
    20. Sinko, Pekka, 2003. "Subsidizing vs. Experience Rating of Unemployment Insurance in Unionized Labor Markets," Discussion Papers 319, VATT Institute for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Taxation; wage setting; public expenditure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J - Labor and Demographic Economics

    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:wpa:wuwpla:0509007. 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: EconWPA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    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.