اصطکاک های چانه زنی، مالیات درآمد حاصل از کار و عملکرد اقتصادی

This paper is an attempt to explain differences in economic performance between a subset of OECD countries. We classify countries in terms of their degree of rigidity in the labor market, and use a matching model with labor/leisure choice, bargaining frictions, and labor income taxation to capture these rigidity differences. Added flexibility improves economic performance in different ways depending on whether income taxation is high or low. Feeding income taxation rates estimated from the countries at hand, we find that the model is able to replicate the observed rigidity levels. The model is also shown to reproduce well cross-country differences in non-employment population ratios and the share of part-time jobs. In the absence of rigidity differences, taxation shows little promise to replicate cross-country differences, as it has insufficient quantitative effects on production and productivity. However, the interaction of rigidity and income taxation is crucial in explaining the empirical patterns of the non-employment rate and of the share of part-time jobs.

It is arguable that the bulk of cross-country variations in economic performance in the OECD can be linked to differences in labor market organization. In this paper, we focus on two labor market features, rigidity in contracting and labor income taxation. We show that they are indeed of first order importance in explaining differences in economic performance amongst European countries as well as between European countries and the US. The indicators of economic performance we focus on are GDP per capita, GDP per hour, hours worked per capita, non-employment, and the proportion of part-time jobs. We frame our analysis in a matching model in which risk-averse workers and risk-neutral firms vary in productivity and face idiosyncratic shocks to productivity. Workers value leisure, and workers and firms bargain over wages and over the length of the work day. We show that four elements of our model are necessary to explain the observed cross-country differences: heterogeneity in productivity, bargaining over the length of the workday as well as the wages, bargaining frictions, and income taxes.

5. Conclusion This paper focuses on the impact of rigidity in contracting and labor income taxation on economic performance in a subset of OECD countries. It shows that these labor market features are of first order importance in explaining differences in GDP per capita, GDP per hour, non-employment and the proportion of part-time jobs amongst European countries, as well as between European countries and the US. To do so the analysis is conducted in a matching model in which risk-averse workers and risk-neutral firms vary in productivity and face idiosyncratic shocks to productivity. Four elements of the model are necessary to explain the observed cross-country differences: bargaining over the length of the workday, heterogeneity, contracting frictions and income taxes. While labor income taxation alone is not enough to account for cross-country differences in economic performance including the proportion of part-time jobs, the interaction of variations in bargaining rigidities on both wages and hours with differences in income taxation goes a long way in explaining differences in economic performance both qualitatively and quantitatively.