IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/series/v8y2017i3d10.1007_s13209-017-0158-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Productivity, taxes, and hours worked in Spain: 1970–2015

Author

Listed:
  • Juan C. Conesa

    (Stony Brook University)

  • Timothy J. Kehoe

    (University of Minnesota)

Abstract

In the early 1970s, hours worked per working-age person in Spain were higher than in the United States. Starting in 1975, however, hours worked in Spain fell by 40%. We find that 80% of the decline in hours worked can be accounted for by the evolution of taxes in an otherwise standard neoclassical growth model. Although taxes play a crucial role, we cannot argue that taxes drive all of the movements in hours worked. In particular, the model underpredicts the large decrease in hours in 1975–1986 and the large increase in hours in 1994–2007. The lack of productivity growth in Spain during 1994–2015 has little impact on the model’s prediction for hours worked.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan C. Conesa & Timothy J. Kehoe, 2017. "Productivity, taxes, and hours worked in Spain: 1970–2015," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 8(3), pages 201-223, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:series:v:8:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s13209-017-0158-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s13209-017-0158-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13209-017-0158-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s13209-017-0158-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Díaz, Antonia & Franjo, Luis, 2016. "Capital goods, measured TFP and growth: The case of Spain," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 19-39.
    2. Edward C. Prescott, 2004. "Why do Americans work so much more than Europeans?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 28(Jul), pages 2-13.
    3. Rogerson, Richard & Wallenius, Johanna, 2009. "Micro and macro elasticities in a life cycle model with taxes," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(6), pages 2277-2292, November.
    4. Lars Ljungqvist & Thomas J. Sargent, 1998. "The European Unemployment Dilemma," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(3), pages 514-550, June.
    5. Samuel Bentolila & Giuseppe Bertola, 1990. "Firing Costs and Labour Demand: How Bad is Eurosclerosis?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(3), pages 381-402.
    6. Raphael Bergoeing & Patrick J. Kehoe & Timothy J. Kehoe & Raimundo Soto, 2002. "A Decade Lost and Found: Mexico and Chile in the 1980s," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(1), pages 166-205, January.
    7. Manuel García‐Santana & Enrique Moral‐Benito & Josep Pijoan‐Mas & Roberto Ramos, 2020. "Growing Like Spain: 1995–2007," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 61(1), pages 383-416, February.
    8. David Domeij & Martin Floden, 2006. "The Labor-Supply Elasticity and Borrowing Constraints: Why Estimates are Biased," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(2), pages 242-262, April.
    9. Browning, Martin & Hansen, Lars Peter & Heckman, James J., 1999. "Micro data and general equilibrium models," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 543-633, Elsevier.
    10. Olivier J. Blanchard & Lawrence H. Summers, 1986. "Hysteresis and the European Unemployment Problem," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1986, Volume 1, pages 15-90, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Raj Chetty & Adam Guren & Day Manoli & Andrea Weber, 2011. "Are Micro and Macro Labor Supply Elasticities Consistent? A Review of Evidence on the Intensive and Extensive Margins," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 471-475, May.
    12. Casey B. Mulligan, 2005. "Public policies as specification errors," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(4), pages 902-926, October.
    13. Gouveia, Miguel & Strauss, Robert P., 1994. "Effective Federal Individual Tax Functions: An Exploratory Empirical Analysis," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 47(2), pages 317-339, June.
    14. Blanchard, Olivier J. & Summers, Lawrence H., 1987. "Hysteresis in unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 288-295.
    15. Juan Carlos Conesa & Timothy J. Kehoe & Kim J. Ruhl, 2007. "Modeling great depressions: the depression in Finland in the 1990s," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 31(Nov), pages 16-44.
    16. Susumu Imai & Michael P. Keane, 2004. "Intertemporal Labor Supply and Human Capital Accumulation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 45(2), pages 601-641, May.
    17. Alberto Alesina & Edward L. Glaeser & Bruce Sacerdote, 2005. "Work and Leisure in the U.S. and Europe: Why So Different?," NBER Working Papers 11278, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Ohanian, Lee & Raffo, Andrea & Rogerson, Richard, 2008. "Long-term changes in labor supply and taxes: Evidence from OECD countries, 1956-2004," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(8), pages 1353-1362, November.
    19. Gouveia, Miguel & Strauss, Robert P., 1994. "Effective Federal Individual Tax Functions: An Exploratory Empirical Analysis," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 47(2), pages 317-39, June.
    20. V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2007. "Business Cycle Accounting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(3), pages 781-836, May.
    21. Timothy J. Kehoe & Edward C. Prescott, 2002. "Great Depressions of the Twentieth Century," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(1), pages 1-18, January.
    22. Juan Jimeno & Tano Santos, 2014. "The crisis of the Spanish economy," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 125-141, August.
    23. Samuel Bentolila & Pierre Cahuc & Juan J. Dolado & Thomas Le Barbanchon, 2012. "Two‐Tier Labour Markets in the Great Recession: France Versus Spain-super-," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(562), pages 155-187, August.
    24. V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2007. "Business Cycle Accounting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(3), pages 781-836, May.
    25. Hansen, Gary D., 1985. "Indivisible labor and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 309-327, November.
    26. Mendoza, Enrique G. & Razin, Assaf & Tesar, Linda L., 1994. "Effective tax rates in macroeconomics: Cross-country estimates of tax rates on factor incomes and consumption," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 297-323, December.
    27. Rogerson, Richard, 1988. "Indivisible labor, lotteries and equilibrium," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 3-16, January.
    28. de Cordoba, Gonzalo Fernandez & Kehoe, Timothy J., 2000. "Capital flows and real exchange rate fluctuations following Spain's entry into the European Community," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 49-78, June.
    29. Harold L. Cole & Lee E. Ohanian, 1999. "The Great Depression in the United States from a neoclassical perspective," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 23(Win), pages 2-24.
    30. Raphael Bergoeing & Patrick J. Kehoe & Timothy J. Kehoe & Raimundo Soto, 2002. "A Decade Lost and Found: Mexico and Chile in the 1980s," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(1), pages 166-205, January.
    31. King, Robert G. & Plosser, Charles I. & Rebelo, Sergio T., 1988. "Production, growth and business cycles : I. The basic neoclassical model," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2-3), pages 195-232.
    32. Heckman, James J, 1993. "What Has Been Learned about Labor Supply in the Past Twenty Years?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 116-121, May.
    33. Timothy J. Kehoe & Edward C. Prescott, 2007. "Great depressions of the twentieth century," Monograph, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, number 2007gdott.
    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. Manuel García‐Santana & Enrique Moral‐Benito & Josep Pijoan‐Mas & Roberto Ramos, 2020. "Growing Like Spain: 1995–2007," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 61(1), pages 383-416, February.
    2. Enrique Moral-Benito, 2018. "Growing by learning: firm-level evidence on the size-productivity nexus," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 65-90, March.
    3. Juan Carlos Conesa & Pau S. Pujolas, 2019. "The Canadian productivity stagnation, 2002–2014," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(2), pages 561-583, May.
    4. Agnani, Betty & Iza Padilla, María Amaya, 2005. "Growth in an oil abundant economy: The case of Venezuela," DFAEII Working Papers 1988-088X, University of the Basque Country - Department of Foundations of Economic Analysis II.
    5. Cruz A. Echevarría & Amaia Iza, 2011. "Social security, education retirement and growth," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 198(3), pages 9-36, September.
    6. Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes & Sara de la Rica, 2008. "Does Immigration Raise Natives’ Income? National and Regional Evidence from Spain," Working Papers 2008-17, FEDEA.
    7. Roberto Ellery Jr. & Victor Gomes, 2014. "Fiscal Policy, Supply Shocks and Economic Expansion in Brazil from 2003 to 2007," Brazilian Business Review, Fucape Business School, vol. 11(3), pages 53-75, June.
    8. Çiçek, Deniz & Elgin, Ceyhun, 2011. "Not-quite-great depressions of Turkey: A quantitative analysis of economic growth over 1968–2004," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 2691-2700.
    9. Pablo D'Erasmo & Enrique Mendoza, 2011. "Optimal Domestic (and External) Sovereign Default," PIER Working Paper Archive 16-019, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 04 Aug 2016.
    10. Duernecker, Georg & Herrendorf, Berthold, 2018. "On the allocation of time – A quantitative analysis of the roles of taxes and productivities," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 169-187.
    11. Díaz, Antonia & Franjo, Luis, 2016. "Capital goods, measured TFP and growth: The case of Spain," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 19-39.
    12. Dalton, John T., 2015. "The Evolution Of Taxes And Hours Worked In Austria, 1970–2005," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(8), pages 1800-1815, December.
    13. Luisa Fuster, 2022. "Macroeconomic and distributive effects of increasing taxes in Spain," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 613-648, December.
    14. Nezih Guner, 2017. "Introduction to the special issue on the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC)," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 311-314, November.
    15. Cheuk Yin Ho, 2007. "Illegal migration and economic growth: simulation analysis in an international context," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 6(41), pages 1-13.
    16. Jose Emilio Boscá & Rafael Domenech & Javier Ferri, 2008. "Tax Reforms and Labour-market Performance: An Evaluation for Spain using REMS," Working Papers 0804, International Economics Institute, University of Valencia.
    17. Stylianos G. Gogos & Dimitris Papageorgiou & Vanghelis Vassilatos, 2017. "Rent Seeking Activities and Aggregate Economic Performance - The Case of Greece," Working Papers 201712, Athens University Of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    18. Jesús Rodríguez López & Mario Solís-García, 2012. "Accounting Spanish business cycles: What can be learned from past recessions?," Working Papers 12.05, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.

    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. Hansen, G.D. & Ohanian, L.E., 2016. "Neoclassical Models in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2043-2130, Elsevier.
    2. Michael Keane & Richard Rogerson, 2015. "Reconciling Micro and Macro Labor Supply Elasticities: A Structural Perspective," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 89-117, 08.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Dynamic general equilibrium; Hours worked; Distortionary taxes; Total factor productivity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C68 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computable General Equilibrium Models
    • E13 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Neoclassical
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    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:spr:series:v:8:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s13209-017-0158-9. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.