IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/halshs-04103754.html

Does A Progressive Wealth Tax Reduce Top Wealth Inequality? Evidence From Switzerland

Author

Listed:
  • Samira Marti

    (UZH - Universität Zürich [Zürich] = University of Zurich)

  • Isabel Z Martínez

    (ETH Zürich - Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [Zürich])

  • Florian Scheuer

    (UZH - Universität Zürich [Zürich] = University of Zurich)

Abstract

Like in many other countries, wealth inequality has increased in Switzerland over the last fifty years. By providing new evidence on cantonal top wealth shares for each of the 26 cantons since 1969, we show that the overall trend masks striking differences across cantons, both in levels and trends. Combining this with variation in cantonal wealth taxes, we then estimate an event study model to identify the dynamic effects of reforms to top wealth tax rates on the subsequent evolution of wealth concentration. Our results imply that a reduction in the top marginal wealth tax rate by 0.1 percentage points increases the top 1% (0.1%) wealth share by 0.9 (1.2) percentage points five years after the reform. This suggests that wealth tax cuts over the last 50 years explain roughly 18% (25%) of the increase in wealth concentration among the top 1% (0.1%).

Suggested Citation

  • Samira Marti & Isabel Z Martínez & Florian Scheuer, 2023. "Does A Progressive Wealth Tax Reduce Top Wealth Inequality? Evidence From Switzerland," Working Papers halshs-04103754, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-04103754
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04103754
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04103754/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Krapf Matthias, 2024. "Die Ungleichheit der zu versteuernden Vermögen in der Schweiz während der Covid-19-Pandemie," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 25(3-4), pages 286-298.
    3. Roberto Iacono & Bard Smedsvik, 2023. "Behavioral responses to wealth taxation: evidence from a Norwegian reform," Working Papers halshs-04423923, HAL.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D3 - Microeconomics - - Distribution
    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents
    • H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations

    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:hal:wpaper:halshs-04103754. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.