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Taxing Top Wealth: Migration Responses and their Aggregate Economic Implications

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  • Katrine Jakobsen
  • Henrik Kleven
  • Jonas Kolsrud
  • Camille Landais
  • Mathilde Muñoz

Abstract

Do wealth taxes lead to a harmful exodus of wealthy taxpayers? Using administrative data on wealth, firm ownership structure, and migration in Sweden and Denmark, we estimate international migration responses to wealth taxation and evaluate the aggregate economic implications of tax-induced migration. Exploiting three large reforms, we find significant migration responses to wealth taxes among the wealthy. We then investigate individual-level, firm-level, and market-level effects of these migration responses. A large fraction of wealthy taxpayers are business owners, and the employment, investments, and value-added of these businesses are negatively affected by owner out-migration. Nevertheless, the aggregate consequences of these effects are modest. We estimate that migration responses to a 1pp increase in the top wealth tax rate decrease the stock of wealthy taxpayers by less than 2% in the long run, and lead to a reduction of 0.05% in aggregate employment, 0.07% in aggregate investment, and 0.13% in aggregate value-added. Hence, our results demonstrate that trickle-down effects of tax-induced migration by the wealthy do exist, but that they are quantitatively small.

Suggested Citation

  • Katrine Jakobsen & Henrik Kleven & Jonas Kolsrud & Camille Landais & Mathilde Muñoz, 2024. "Taxing Top Wealth: Migration Responses and their Aggregate Economic Implications," NBER Working Papers 32153, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32153
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Dray, Sacha & Landais, Camille & Stantcheva, Stefanie, 2023. "Wealth and Property Taxation in the United States," CEPR Discussion Papers 18096, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Henrik Jacobsen Kleven & Camille Landais & Emmanuel Saez, 2013. "Taxation and International Migration of Superstars: Evidence from the European Football Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1892-1924, August.
    3. Jäger, Simon & Heining, Jörg, 2019. "How Substitutable Are Workers? Evidence from Worker Deaths," MPRA Paper 109757, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 Jan 2019.
    4. Jonas Kolsrud & Camille Landais & Peter Nilsson & Johannes Spinnewijn, 2018. "The Optimal Timing of Unemployment Benefits: Theory and Evidence from Sweden," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(4-5), pages 985-1033, April.
    5. Marius Brülhart & Jonathan Gruber & Matthias Krapf & Kurt Schmidheiny, 2022. "Behavioral Responses to Wealth Taxes: Evidence from Switzerland," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 111-150, November.
    6. José María Durán-Cabré & Alejandro Esteller-Moré & Mariona Mas-Montserrat, 2019. "Behavioural responses to the (re)introduction of wealth taxes. Evidence from Spain," Working Papers 2019/04, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
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    Cited by:

    1. Kalin, Salla & Kauppinen, Ilpo & Kotakorpi, Kaisa & Pirttilä, Jukka, 2022. "Migration and tax policy: Evidence from Finnish full population data," Working Papers 150, VATT Institute for Economic Research.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship

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