IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ivi/wpasad/2011-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Visibility of social security contributions and employment

Author

Listed:
  • Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe Kortajarene

    (Universidad de Alicante)

Abstract

Social security contributions in most countries are split between employers and employees. According to standard incidence analysis, social security contributions affect employment negatively, but it is irrelevant how they are divided between employers and employees. This paper considers the possibility that: (i) workers perceive a linkage between current contributions and future benefits and, (ii) they discount employers contributions more heavily, as they are less “visible”. Under these assumptions, I find that employer contributions have a stronger (negative) effect on employment than employee contributions. Furthermore, a change in how contributions are divided that reduces the share of employers is beneficial for employment. Finally, making employers contributions more visible to workers also has a positive effect on employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe Kortajarene, 2011. "Visibility of social security contributions and employment," Working Papers. Serie AD 2011-16, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    • Handle: RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2011-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ivie.es/downloads/docs/wpasad/wpasad-2011-16.pdf
    File Function: Fisrt version / Primera version, 2011
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Casey B. Mulligan & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1999. "Gerontocracy, retirement, and social security," Economics Working Papers 383, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    2. Raj Chetty & Adam Looney & Kory Kroft, 2009. "Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1145-1177, September.
    3. Layard, Richard & Nickell, Stephen & Jackman, Richard, 2005. "Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199279173.
    4. Pissarides, Christopher A., 1998. "The impact of employment tax cuts on unemployment and wages; The role of unemployment benefits and tax structure," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 155-183, January.
    5. Mastrobuoni, Giovanni, 2011. "The role of information for retirement behavior: Evidence based on the stepwise introduction of the Social Security Statement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 913-925.
    6. 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.
    7. Marika Cabral & Caroline Hoxby, 2012. "The Hated Property Tax: Salience, Tax Rates, and Tax Revolts," NBER Working Papers 18514, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Feldstein, Martin & Samwick, Andrew A., 1992. "Social Security Rules and Marginal Tax Rates," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 45(1), pages 1-22, March.
    9. Koskela, Erkki & Schob, Ronnie, 1999. "Does the composition of wage and payroll taxes matter under Nash bargaining?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 343-349, September.
    10. Jacob Goldin & Tatiana Homonoff, 2013. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Cigarette Tax Salience and Regressivity," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 302-336, February.
    11. Mulligan Casey B & Gil Ricard & Sala-i-Martin Xavier X, 2010. "Social Security and Democracy," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-46, March.
    12. Raj Chetty, 2009. "The Simple Economics of Salience and Taxation," NBER Working Papers 15246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), 2002. "Handbook of Public Economics," Handbook of Public Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 4, number 4.
    14. Tito Boeri & Axel Börsch-Supan & Guido Tabellini, 2001. "Would you like to shrink the welfare state? A survey of European citizens," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 16(32), pages 08-50.
    15. Tito Boeri & Axel Boersch-Supan & Guido Tabellini, 2002. "Pension Reforms and the Opinions of European Citizens," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 396-401, May.
    16. Mulligan, Casey B. & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1999. "Gerontocracy, Retirement, and Social Security," Working Papers 154, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    17. A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), 2002. "Handbook of Public Economics," Handbook of Public Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Make social security contributions more visible
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2011-08-31 19:02:00

    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. Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe, 2015. "Salience of social security contributions and employment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 22(5), pages 741-759, October.
    2. Pinotti Paolo, 2009. "Financial Development and Pay-As-You-Go Social Security," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-21, March.
    3. Adam, Stuart & Phillips, David & Roantree, Barra, 2019. "35 years of reforms: A panel analysis of the incidence of, and employee and employer responses to, social security contributions in the UK," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 29-50.
    4. Marco Bassetto, 2008. "Political Economy of Taxation in an Overlapping-Generations Economy," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(1), pages 18-43, January.
    5. Walter Fisher & Christian Keuschnigg, 2010. "Pension reform and labor market incentives," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(2), pages 769-803, March.
    6. Van der Linden, Bruno, 1998. "Fighting unemployment without worsening povety: Basic income versus reductions of social security contributions," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 1999028, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES), revised 00 Oct 1999.
    7. Christian N. Brinch & Erik Hernæs & Zhiyang Jia, 2017. "Salience and Social Security Benefits," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 265-297.
    8. Ángel Melguizo & José González-Páramo, 2013. "Who bears labour taxes and social contributions? A meta-analysis approach," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 247-271, August.
    9. Christian Jaag & Christian Keuschnigg & Mirela Keuschnigg, 2010. "Pension reform, retirement, and life-cycle unemployment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 17(5), pages 556-585, October.
    10. Libor Dusek, 2007. "Political Risk of Social Security: The Case of the Indexation of Benefits in the Czech Republic," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp318, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    11. Christian Keuschnigg & Mirela Keuschnigg & Christian Jaag, 2011. "Aging and the Financing of Social Security in Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 147(II), pages 181-231, June.
    12. John Yinger & Phuong Nguyen-Hoang, 2015. "The Behavioral Impacts of Poverty Tax Relief: Salience or Framing?," Center for Policy Research Working Papers 186, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
    13. Kent Smetters, 2005. "Social Security Privatization with Elastic Labor Supply and Second-Best Taxes," Working Papers wp092, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    14. Oksanen, Heikki, 2003. "A nyugdíjreformtervek a jóléti államokban - öregedő népesség esetén [Pension-reform blueprints for welfare states under ageing populations]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(7), pages 654-670.
    15. García, José Ramón & Sala, Hector, 2008. "The tax system incidence on unemployment: A country-specific analysis for the OECD economies," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 1232-1245, November.
    16. Keuschnigg, Christian & Fisher, Walter, 2011. "Life-Cycle Unemployment, Retirement and Parametric Pension Reform," Economics Working Paper Series 1119, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    17. Jante Parlevliet, 2017. "What drives public acceptance of reforms? Longitudinal evidence from a Dutch pension reform," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 1-23, October.
    18. Bertil Holmlund, 2002. "Labor Taxation in Search Equilibrium with Home Production," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 3(4), pages 415-430, November.
    19. Martin Weiss, 2009. "Higher Tax Rates on Labor? Evidence from German Panel Data," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 65(1), pages 73-92, March.
    20. Alfonso Arpaia & Giuseppe Carone, 2004. "Do labour taxes (and their composition) affect wages in the short and in the long run?," Public Economics 0411004, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Payroll tax; social security; tax incidence; tax visibility;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • H22 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Incidence
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • J08 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics Policies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Economic Logic blog

    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:ivi:wpasad:2011-16. 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: Departamento de Edición (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ievages.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.