IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nst/samfok/16815.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Regional payroll tax cuts and individual wages: Heterogeneous effects across education groups

Author

Listed:
  • Hildegunn Ekroll Stokke

    (Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

Abstract

The empirical evidence on the incidence of payroll taxation is primarily based on the wage bill of firms. This paper applies matched employer-employee register data on individual wages for all private sector workers in Norway. Exploiting a payroll tax reform and using the difference-indifference approach, I find that 1% reduction in labor costs generates 0.5% wage increase. Among low educated workers the degree of tax shifting equals 50%, while the wage response for highly educated is insignificant. Lower payroll taxes have limited effects on employment. The findings imply that the absolute value of the labor demand elasticity decreases with the level of education.

Suggested Citation

  • Hildegunn Ekroll Stokke, 2015. "Regional payroll tax cuts and individual wages: Heterogeneous effects across education groups," Working Paper Series 16815, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
    • Handle: RePEc:nst:samfok:16815
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.svt.ntnu.no/iso/WP/2015/7_Stokke.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anderson, Patricia M. & Meyer, Bruce D., 2000. "The effects of the unemployment insurance payroll tax on wages, employment, claims and denials," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1-2), pages 81-106, October.
    2. Gruber, Jonathan, 1997. "The Incidence of Payroll Taxation: Evidence from Chile," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(3), pages 72-101, July.
    3. Bohm, Peter & Lind, Hans, 1993. "Policy evaluation quality : A quasi-experimental study of regional employment subsidies in Sweden," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 51-65, March.
    4. Jan Morten Dyrstad & Kare Johansen, 2000. "Regional Wage Responses to Unemployment and Profitability: Empirical Evidence From Norwegian Manufacturing Industries," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 62(1), pages 101-117, February.
    5. Emmanuel Saez & Manos Matsaganis & Panos Tsakloglou, 2012. "Earnings Determination and Taxes: Evidence From a Cohort-Based Payroll Tax Reform in Greece," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(1), pages 493-533.
    6. Cruces, Guillermo & Galiani, Sebastian & Kidyba, Susana, 2010. "Payroll taxes, wages and employment: Identification through policy changes," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 743-749, August.
    7. Ossi Korkeamäki & Roope Uusitalo, 2009. "Employment and wage effects of a payroll-tax cut—evidence from a regional experiment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 16(6), pages 753-772, December.
    8. David Albouy, 2009. "The Unequal Geographic Burden of Federal Taxation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(4), pages 635-667, August.
    9. Gary Solon & Steven J. Haider & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2015. "What Are We Weighting For?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 301-316.
    10. Roback, Jennifer, 1982. "Wages, Rents, and the Quality of Life," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(6), pages 1257-1278, December.
    11. Anderson, Patricia M. & Meyer, Bruce D., 1997. "The effects of firm specific taxes and government mandates with an application to the U.S. unemployment insurance program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 119-145, August.
    12. Bennmarker, Helge & Mellander, Erik & Öckert, Björn, 2009. "Do regional payroll tax reductions boost employment?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 480-489, October.
    13. Dyrstad, Jan Morten & Johansen, Kare, 2000. "Regional Wage Responses to Unemployment and Profitabililty: Empirical Evidence from Norwegian Manufacturing Industries," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 62(1), pages 101-117, February.
    14. Murphy, Kevin J., 2007. "The impact of unemployment insurance taxes on wages," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 457-484, June.
    15. Frode Johansen & Tor Jacob Klette, 1997. "Wage and Employment Effects of Payroll Taxes and Investment Subsidies," Discussion Papers 194, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    16. Skedinger, Per, 2014. "Effects of Payroll Tax Cuts for Young Workers," Working Paper Series 1031, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    17. Gruber, Jonathan, 1994. "The Incidence of Mandated Maternity Benefits," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 622-641, June.
    18. Carlsen, Fredrik & Johansen, Kare, 2005. "Regional wages and subjective measures of employment opportunities," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 377-400, May.
    19. Jørn Rattsø & Hildegunn E. Stokke, 2017. "National income taxation and the geographic distribution of population," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(5), pages 879-902, September.
    20. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 1993. "Labor Demand and the Source of Adjustment Costs," NBER Working Papers 4394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Alessandro Zeli, 2018. "The impact of ACE on investment: the Italian case," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 35(3), pages 741-762, December.
    2. Gidehag, Anton, 2019. "Firms’ labor cost savings and recruitment of nonwestern immigrants: The unintended effect of a payroll tax reform," HFI Working Papers 5, Institute of Retail Economics (Handelns Forskningsinstitut).

    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. Kim, Jinyoung & Kim, Seonghoon & Koh, Kanghyock, 2022. "Labor market institutions and the incidence of payroll taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    2. Egebark, Johan & Kaunitz, Niklas, 2018. "Payroll taxes and youth labor demand," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 163-177.
    3. Hyejin Ku & Uta Schönberg & Ragnhild C. Schreiner, 2018. "How Do Firms Respond to Place-Based Tax Incentives?," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 1811, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
    4. Hildegunn E. Stokke, 2021. "Regional payroll tax cuts and individual wages: heterogeneous effects of worker ability and firm productivity," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 28(6), pages 1360-1384, December.
    5. Egebark, Johan & Kaunitz, Niklas, 2013. "Do payroll tax cuts raise youth employment?," Working Paper Series 2013:27, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    6. Emmanuel Saez & Benjamin Schoefer & David Seim, 2019. "Payroll Taxes, Firm Behavior, and Rent Sharing: Evidence from a Young Workers' Tax Cut in Sweden," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(5), pages 1717-1763, May.
    7. Bennmarker, Helge & Mellander, Erik & Öckert, Björn, 2009. "Do regional payroll tax reductions boost employment?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 480-489, October.
    8. Ku, Hyejin & Schönberg, Uta & Schreiner, Ragnhild C., 2020. "Do place-based tax incentives create jobs?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    9. Gavrilova, Evelina & Zoutman, Floris T. & Hopland, Arnt O., 2017. "How to Use One Instrument to Identify Two Elasticities," Discussion Papers 2017/2, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/18k79jk7138279qstaf2rdulvu is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Clément Carbonnier & Bruno Palier & Michaël Zemmour, 2016. "Tax cuts or social investment? Evaluating the opportunity cost of French employment strategy," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 40(6), pages 1687-1705.
    12. Clément Carbonnier, 2014. "Payroll Taxation and the structure of qualifications and wages in a segmented frictional labor market with intrafirm bargaining," THEMA Working Papers 2014-20, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    13. Neumann, M., 2017. "Earnings responses to social security contributions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 55-73.
    14. Clément Carbonnier & Bruno Palier & Michael Zemmour, 2014. "Tax cuts or social investment? Evaluating the opportunity cost of the French employment strategy," Sciences Po publications 31, Sciences Po.
    15. Clément Carbonnier, 2015. "Payroll Taxation, qualifications, wages and unemployment rates in a frictional labor market with productive interactions between segments," Working Papers hal-01203122, HAL.
    16. Jonas Månsson & A. Quoreshi, 2015. "Evaluating regional cuts in the payroll tax from a firm perspective," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 54(2), pages 323-347, March.
    17. Jonathan Deslauriers & Benoit Dostie & Robert Gagné & Jonathan Paré, 2021. "Estimating the impacts of payroll taxes: Evidence from Canadian employer–employee tax data," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(4), pages 1609-1637, November.
    18. Matthias Collischon & Kamila Cygan-Rehm & Regina T. Riphahn, 2021. "Employment effects of payroll tax subsidies," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 1201-1219, October.
    19. Skedinger, Per, 2014. "Effects of Payroll Tax Cuts for Young Workers," Working Paper Series 1031, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    20. Jørn Rattsø & Hildegunn E. Stokke, 2017. "National income taxation and the geographic distribution of population," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(5), pages 879-902, September.
    21. Korkeamäki, Ossi, 2011. "The Finnish payroll tax cut experiment revisited," Working Papers 22, VATT Institute for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Payroll tax cut; individual wages; heterogeneous effects; education;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H22 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Incidence
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nst:samfok:16815. 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: Anne Larsen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isontno.html .

    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.