IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/apeclt/v31y2024i4p330-337.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Labor protection, tax planning, and capital investment: evidence from small-sized enterprises

Author

Listed:
  • Antonio De Vito

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of labour protection laws on tax planning and capital investment. Exploiting a major reform that introduced firing costs in Italy for firms with fewer than 15 employees but left firing costs unchanged for larger firms combined with matched employer-employee data, I show that the rise in firing costs led small firms to increase tax avoidance and capital investment relative to larger firms. Robustness and placebo tests suggest that the results are causal. Overall, the findings indicate that tax avoidance allows small firms to generate internal funds to substitute labour for capital when employment protection becomes stronger.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio De Vito, 2024. "Labor protection, tax planning, and capital investment: evidence from small-sized enterprises," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(4), pages 330-337, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:31:y:2024:i:4:p:330-337
    DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2022.2133891
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2022.2133891
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13504851.2022.2133891?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    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:taf:apeclt:v:31:y:2024:i:4:p:330-337. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEL20 .

    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.