IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2607.03868.html

Tax Migration as Social Contagion: A Tipping-Point Model with Application to the Scandinavian Wealth Tax Debate

Author

Listed:
  • Anders G Fr{o}seth

Abstract

Blandhol (2025) estimates that wealth-tax-induced emigration from Norway reduces long-run GDP by 1.3%. Dansk Industri scaled this figure to argue that a Danish wealth tax would cost billions - a claim central to the 2026 Danish election campaign. We develop a social contagion model in which the emigration rate depends on a visibility-weighted fraction of prior emigrants, producing tipping-point dynamics. Embedding the model in the Fokker-Planck framework of Froseth (2026, arXiv:2603.05283), we show that the micro-to-macro extrapolation underlying the 1.3% figure requires five identification conditions to hold simultaneously - each of which is violated. Using a panel of the 400 wealthiest Norwegians (2011-2025), we estimate the Pareto tail exponent (approximately 1.3, stable across years), identify the emigrants within Blandhol's 2016-2020 sample window, and document a hidden channel of heir-emigration - 36 recent cases carrying approximately 127 bn NOK - invisible in panel data because controlling owners retain their A-shares while heirs emigrate with economic exposure only. The event-study sample is dominated by passive wealth-holders with near-zero productivity haircuts, and the wealth-weighted integral that determines the GDP effect is controlled by individuals entirely absent from the sample. The Norwegian emigration wave is a non-scalable, path-dependent tipping event, not a smooth elasticity.

Suggested Citation

  • Anders G Fr{o}seth, 2026. "Tax Migration as Social Contagion: A Tipping-Point Model with Application to the Scandinavian Wealth Tax Debate," Papers 2607.03868, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2607.03868
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.03868
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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:arx:papers:2607.03868. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arxiv.org/ .

    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.