| 1. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Asset Markets, Tax Arbitrage, and the Redistributive Properties of Progressive Income Taxation
- 1988
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- It is commonly believed that tax arbitrage is anti-egalitarian. The present paper shows that this is not necessarily true; tax arbitrage might actually reduce inequality as well as increase efficiency. It is also shown that the introduction of tax arbitrage will linearize the tax system. Thus complicated, non-linear tax scedules in the spirit of Mirrlees (1971) cannot be sustained.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Egalitarianism and Growth
- 1991
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Are competitive wage premia an obstacle to growth? The answer of the architects of the Scandinavian "model" in the 1950s and 60s was in the affirmative: By punishing expansive and growth enhancing sectors of the economy competitive wage premia put an unwarranted drag on the rate of structural change. We formalize this intuition using a two sector endogenous growth model, considering both open and closed economy cases. We also show that egalitarian pay compression, combined with active labor market policies, works exactly in the same way as an industrial policy of subsidizing sunrise industries.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Fiscal Policy when Monetary Policy is Tied to the Mast
- 1994
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The paper analyses the time inconsistency problem of both exchange rate and fiscal policy in a small open economy. The equilibrium under discretion is characterised by inflation and a deficit. Commitment of the exchange-rate instrument only, e.g., through membership in a European monetary union with low inflation, contributes to price stability but increases the deficit. Whether the government will prefer this outcome to the discretionary one depends on the structure of the economy: commitment appears more favourable, the more open is the economy. The time-consistency arguments strengthen the case for simultaneous commitment of monetary and fiscal policy for inflation-prone countries joining a monetary union.
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| 8. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Growth and the public sector : a reply
- 1999
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Fölster and Henrekson (1998) claim that they, by addressing a number of econometric problems, can establish that it is likely that economies with a large public sector grow more slowly than economies with a small public sector. But their regressions are fundamentally flawed. Re-estimating their growth equation using theoretically valid instruments, we find that the growth effect of the public sector is statistically insignificant, and much smaller than the point-estimates reported by Fölster and Henrekson. This is consistent with the agnostic conclusion, drawn by us and many others, that cross-country growth regressions are unlikely to give a reliable answer to whether a large public sector is growth promoting or retarding.
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| 9. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Growth and the public sector : A reply
- 1999
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Ingår i: European Journal of Political Economy. - 0176-2680 .- 1873-5703. ; 15:2, s. 359-366
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Fölster and Henrekson [Fölster, S., Henrekson, M., 1999. Growth and the public sector: A critique of the critics. European Journal of Political Economy 15, 337–358] claim that, by addressing a number of econometric problems, they can establish that it is likely that economies with a large public sector grow more slowly than economies with a small public sector. But their regressions are fundamentally flawed. Re-estimating their growth equation using theoretically valid instruments, we find that the growth effect of the public sector is statistically insignificant, and much smaller than the point-estimates that they report. This is consistent with the agnostic conclusion, drawn by us and others, that cross-country growth regressions are unlikely to provide a reliable answer as to whether a large public sector is growth promoting or retarding.
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| 10. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Growth and the public sector : A critical review essay
- 1997
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Ingår i: European Journal of Political Economy. - 0176-2680 .- 1873-5703. ; 13:1, s. 33-52
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We review the theoretical and empirical evidence on the relation between growth and the public sector against the background of the current debate on the issue. The evidence is found to admit no conclusion on whether the relation is positive, negative or non-existent. A simple cross-country regression in an OECD sample illustrates how the relation is easily tilted from negative to positive by introducing control variables for initial GDP and the dependent population.
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| 11. |
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| 12. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Growth effects of government expenditure and taxation in rich countries : A comment
- 2006
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Ingår i: European Economic Review. - : Elsevier BV. - 0014-2921 .- 1873-572X. ; 50:1, s. 211-218
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Fölster and Henrekson (European Economic Review 45 (2001), 1501–1520) argue that “...the more the econometric problems that are addressed, the more robust the relationship between government size and economic growth appears”. But in failing to control for simultaneity and in ignoring issues of sample-selection bias, the regressions reported by Fölster/Henrekson are flawed. Using theoretically valid instruments, we find that the estimated partial correlation between size of the public sector and economic growth is statistically insignificant and highly unstable across specifications. Moreover, since instruments are weak, all hypothesis tests are unreliable. We conclude that cross-country growth regressions are unlikely to come up with a reliable answer to the question of the growth effects of government spending and taxation.
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| 13. |
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| 14. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Incentives and redistribution in the welfare state: The Swedish tax reform
- 1998. - Subsequent edition
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This book reviews the lessons from the Swedish 1991 tax reform, the most far-reaching tax reform in any Western industrialized country in the post-war period. The authors discuss a range of behavioural responses (including tax planning, savings, labour supply, investment, etc), and assess the overall effects on efficiency and equity. They also draw lessons for tax reform more generally. The book should be of interest to anyone with an interest in tax policy and tax reform evaluation.
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| 15. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Labor Supply Prediction when Tax Avoidance Matters
- 1999
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We examine how tax avoidance in the form of trade in well-functioning asset markets affects the emipircal study of labor supply. We discuss the implications for tax policy analysis, and we show that a failure to account for avoidance responses may lead to huge errors when predicting how tax reform affects labor supply, tax revenue, and the welfare cost of taxation. in conclusion we argue that our model may explain a number of otherwise hard to understand dimensions of tax payer response.
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| 16. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Labor supply prediction when tax avoidance matters
- 1999
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Labor Supply Prediction when Tax Avoidance Matters Jonas Agell, Mats Persson and Hans Sacklén, 1999/16, September 1999 We examine how tax avoidance in the form of trade in well-functioning asset markets affects the empirical study of labor supply. We di
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| 17. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Macroeconomic Externalities : Are Pigovian Taxes the Answer?
- 1991
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Basic welfare economics tells us that many types of externalities can be remedied by proper use of corrective taxes and subsidies. This paper shows that this notion also extends to the macroeconomic externalities discussed in recent Keynesian literature on nominal price rigidities. The derived policy rules are lindred in spirit to standard Keynesian policy prescriptions: Progressive income taxes may serve a useful role in combating wasteful economic fluctuations. However, unlike older fix-price models of automatic stabilizers, progressive taxes work in our monopolistic economy because they directly affect the pricing mechanism.
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| 18. |
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| 19. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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On the Analytics of the Dynamic Laffer Curve
- 2000
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this paper, we analyze government budget balance within a simple model of endogenous growth. For the AK model, simple analytical conditions for a tax cut to be self-financing can be derived. The critical variable is not the tax rate per se, but the "transfer-adjusted tax rate". We discuss some conceptual issues in dynamic revenue analysis, and we explain why previous studies have arrived at seemingly contradictory results. Finally, we perform an empirical study of the transfer-adjusted tax rates of the OECD countries to see which country has the highest potential for fiscal improvements; it turns out that only a few countries have any potential for such "dynamic scoring".
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| 20. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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On the Analytics of the Dynamic Laffer Curve
- 2000
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this paper, we analyze government budget balance within a simple model of endogenous growth. For the AK model, simple analytical conditions for a tax cut to be self-financing can be derived. The critical variable is not the tax rate per se, but the "tr
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| 21. |
- Agell, Jonas
(författare)
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On the benefits from rigid labour markets : norms, market failures,and social insurance
- 1998
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The common view that far-reaching labour market deregulation is the only remedy for high European unemployment is too simplistic. First, the evidence suggests that deeply rooted social customs are an important cause of wage rigidity, going beyond the legal constraints emphasized in the political debate. Second, in a second-best setting, a compressed wage structure may generate an efficiency gain. Finally, based on simple plots of the relation between labour market institutions and openness in OECD countries, I conclude that the globalization of economic activity may lead to increased demand for various labour market rigidities.
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| 22. |
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| 23. |
- Agell, Jonas
(författare)
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On the determinants of labour market institutions : rent-sharing vs. social insurance
- 2000
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- What determines the structure of labour market institutions? This paper argues that common explanations based on rent sharing are incomplete; unions, job protection, and egalitarian pay structures may have as much to do with social insurance of otherwise uninsurable risks as with rent sharing and vested interests. In support of this more benign complementary hypothesis the paper presents a range of historical, theoretical, and cross-country regression evidence. The social insurance perspective changes substantially the assessment of often-proposed reforms of European labour market institutions. The benefits from eliminating labour market rigidities have to be set against the costs of reduced coverage of human capital related risk. The paper also argues that it is unclear whether the forces of globalisation, and the new economy, will really force countries to make their labour markets more flexible. While these phenomena may increase the efficiency costs of existing institutions, they may also make people more willing to pay a high premium to preserve institutions that provide insurance.
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| 24. |
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| 25. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Survey evidence on wage rigidity and unemployment : Sweden in the 1990s
- 1999
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study reports the results from a repeat survey among managers in Swedish manufacturing, designed to explore how a severe and prolonged macroeconomic shock affects wage rigidity and unemployment. Our second survey was conducted in 1998, when the unemployment rate was much higher, and the inflation rate much lower, than when we conducted the first survey in 1991. We find no evidence that the increase in unemployment has softened the mechanisms generating wage rigidity. On the contrary, we conclude that – because of severe downward nominal wage rigidity – real wages have become more rigid during Sweden’s move to a low-inflation environment. We also report a range of new evidence on underbidding, efficiency wage mechanisms, job security legislation, workers’ wage norms, and to what extent the long-term unemployed are subject to statistical discrimination.
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| 26. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Survey evidence on wage rigidity and unemployment : Sweden in the 1990s
- 1999
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study reports the results from a repeat survey among managers in Swedish manufacturing, designed to explore how a severe and prolonged macroeconomic shock affects wage rigidity and unemployment. Our second survey was conducted in 1998, when the unemp
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| 27. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Tax Arbitrage and Labor Supply
- 1998
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We examine how tax avoidance in the form of trade in well-functioning asset markets affects the basic labor supply model. We show that tax arbitrage has potentially dramatic implications for positive, normative and econometric analysis of how taxes affect work incentives.
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| 28. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Tax Arbitrage and Labor Supply
- 2000
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Ingår i: Journal of Public Economics. - : North-Holland. - 0047-2727. ; 78:1-2, s. 3-24
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)
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| 29. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Tax arbitrage and labor supply
- 1997
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We examine how tax avoidance in the form of trade in well-functioning asset markets affects the basic labor supply model. We show that tax arbitrage has dramatic implications for positive, normative and econometric analysis of how taxes affect work incentives.
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| 30. |
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| 31. |
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| 32. |
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| 33. |
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| 34. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Tillväxt och offentlig sektor
- 1994
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Ingår i: Ekonomisk Debatt. - 0345-2646. ; 22:4, s. 373-385
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- I den populära svenska debatten hävdas ofta att det finns ett starkt negativt samband mellan offentlig sektor och ekonomisk tillväxt. Den empiriska litteraturen ger emellertid inte något belägg for ett entydigt kausalt samband från stor offentlig sektor till låg tillväxt. Jonas Agell, Thomas Lindh och Henry Ohlsson går i denna artikel igenom den aktuella teoretiska och empiriska forskningen på området. Med några enkla jämförelser för OECD-länderna visar de att andra faktorer än offentlig sektor kan tänkas ha större betydelse för tillväxtskillnader mellan länder.
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| 35. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Wage Fairness and International Trade Theory and Policy
- 1991
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We show how an extended theory of fair wages, in which workers also care about the functional distribution of income, can be incorporated in the two-by-two Heckscher-Ohlin model. An important feature of the model is the existence of involuntary unemployment. Several results stand out. First, there is no longer a simple relation between measures of factor abundance and trade patterns. First, there is no longer a simple relation between measures of factor abundance and trade patterns. Second, factor-price equalization will generally not occur. Third, differences in social norms explain why terms of trade shocks produce nonuniform adjustments in real wages and unemployment across otherwise similar countries. Fourth, losses from trade may occur. Finally, in countries where fairness considerations are important, tariffs may increase overall employment.
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| 36. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Wage incentives and wage rigidity : A representative view from within
- 2007
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Ingår i: Labour Economics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0927-5371 .- 1879-1034. ; 14:3, s. 347-369
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A recent literature has used surveys of those who set wages to learn about the nature of wage incentives and the sources of wage rigidity. Methodologically, we overcome many of the objections that have been raised against this work. Substantively, we find that: (i) the reasons for real wage rigidity differ significantly between large and small firms, and between the high- and low-end of the labor market; (ii) efficiency wage mechanisms reinforce rigidities due to worker bargaining power; (iii) money illusion is a widespread phenomenon across all segments of the labor market; (iv) unions reinforce nominal wage rigidities due to external pay comparisons; (v) there appears to be gender differences in pay bargaining and work morale.
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| 37. |
- Armelius, Hanna, 1973-
(författare)
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Distributional Side Effects of Tax Policies: An Analysis of Tax Avoidance and Congestion Tolls
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three self-contained essays.Essay 1This essay examines the effects of tax avoidance on saving and income distribution. In an intertemporal model taxes can be avoided through asset trade. We find that including an avoidance response to taxation will increase all the negative distortions of increased tax progressivity. This result is in contrast to previous findings that tax avoidance can be used to escape some of the negative incentives that a highly progressive tax system leads to. Furthermore, we find that in the presence of tax avoidance measurements of income inequality will be biased downward, since avoidance is more common among the relatively rich. A simulation of a representative economy shows that standard measurements of inequality can be seriously misleading, particularly for economies with relatively high marginal tax rates.Essay 2The paper analyses an integrated urban road pricing policy based on an automatic payment system for cars. Like Glazer and Niskanen (2000) we study congestion tolls with heterogeneous commuters, but we focus on welfare effects and extend their model to include a choice of departure time, as well as travel mode. We find that tolls can be welfare improving even if the public transit mode normally used for substitution is also congested. If, for some reason, public transit charges cannot be changed, substitution towards off-peak travel can be stimulated by a combined road toll and parking duties policy made possible by modern automatic vehicle-identification technologies.Essay 3This essay focuses on the distributional impact and political acceptance of congestion tolls, which, we find, will depend on the location of a switch point income level, at which tolls become regressive. The latter, in turn, depends on the relative attractiveness of the car versus the mass transit system. We find that in a European setting, congestion tolls will most likely have a negative effect on the middle classes, while individuals at both tails of the income distribution will find themselves better off. An investment in the public transportation system will increase the number of individuals who would favor a reform involving congestion tolls on the road network. Such investments might therefore be warranted not only for environmental reasons, but also as a means of making an optimal road pricing policy politically acceptable, something which can be useful particularly in developing countries where financing traffic improvements can be difficult.
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| 38. |
- Ekberg, John, 1970-
(författare)
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Essays in Empirical Labor Economics
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four self-contained essays in the field of empirical labor economics.The first essay, Nominal Wage Rigidity in the Swedish Labor Market, presents an empirical investigation of the extent of downward nominal wage rigidity on the Swedish labor market. The analysis shows that cuts in nominal basic wages are rare and the skewness of wage change distributions is negatively correlated with the median change, corroborating the existence of downward rigidity. The second essay, Nominal Wage Rigidity and Real Implications for the Swedish Labor Market, is based on a model of proportional downward wage rigidity. Real implications of the estimates are examined, in order to analyze the effects of downward nominal wage rigidity on the NAIRU under different inflation policies. The potential cost of downward rigidity on the long-run unemployment rate is found to be relatively moderate.The third essay, Firm Size -Wage Effect: Fact or Artifact?, investigates the employer size-wage premium. The inclusion of controls for specific occupations and hierarchies has a profound effect on the estimated effect. The control for hierarchies conditional on occupation results in an effect of size on wage that is not necessarily positive.The fourth essay, Sharing Responsibility? Short- and Long-term Effects of Sweden's "Daddy-Month" Reform. In 1995, the Swedish government reformed the parental leave system. The reform constitutes a natural experiment. Comparing two cohorts of newborns, their mothers and fathers over a period of eight years, we look at the number of days mothers and fathers take for parental leave and the number of days for care of sick children. We find that the reform had a strong short-term effect on parental leave by fathers, but that there are no long-run effects on fathers' willingness to increase their part in care for sick children.
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| 39. |
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| 40. |
- Nilsson, Anna, 1977-
(författare)
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Indirect effects of unemployment and low earnings : Crime and children's school performance
- 2005
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three self-contained essays that consider indirect effects of unemployment and low earnings on crime and children’s school performance. The first essay, Crime, unemployment and labor market programs in turbulent times (joint with Jonas Agell), investigates the effect of unemployment and participation in labor market programs, in general and among youth, on Swedish crime rates using a new panel data set for Swedish municipalities for the period 1996-2000. The exceptional variation in Swedish unemployment in the 1990s provides a remarkable (quasi-) experiment. Between 1996 and 2000 the overall unemployment rate (including those enrolled in labor market programs) decreased from 11.9 to 6.8 percent, and for those most likely to commit crimes, people under the age of 25, unemployment decreased from 21.2 to 8.7 percent. But the decrease in unemployment was far from uniform across the country, and our identification strategy is to use the exceptional variation in the improvement in labor market conditions across municipalities to isolate the relationship between unemployment and crime. We also consider whether placement in labor market programs reduce crime. Such an effect could arise for many reasons. Program participation may imply: (i) that there is less time for other activities, including crime; (ii) social interactions that prevent the participant from adopting the wrong kind of social norms; (iii) a greater ability to earn legal income in the labor market. Unlike most previous studies we identify a statistically and economically significant effect of general unemployment on the incidence of burglary, auto-theft and drug possession. Contrary to much popular wisdom, however, we could not establish a clear association between youth unemployment and the incidence of youthful crimes and there is no evidence that labor market programs – general ones and those targeted to the young – help to reduce crime.The second essay, Earnings and crime: The case of Sweden, analyzes whether low earnings has an effect on Swedish crime rates, considering the overall crime rate and specific property crime categories, using a panel of county-level data for the period 1975–2000. Various measures of the income distribution are considered, based on annual labor earnings as well as annual disposable income. The results indicate that the effect of low earnings on crime in Sweden is at best weak. We estimate a significant effect of low earnings on the number of auto thefts, but the effect is small. Low earnings seem to have no effect on the overall crime rate, the number of burglaries or the robbery rate. The results give, however, further support for an unambiguous link between unemployment and the overall crime rate as well as specific property crime categories. These findings are in contrast with results from, for example, the United States where wages are found to have a stronger impact on crime than unemployment. The differing results could, at least partly, be explained by the fact that during the period investigated, Swedish unemployment has been of a more permanent nature than U.S. unemployment, and that transitory earnings fluctuations appear to dominate the Swedish earnings distribution for young men, a part of the population committing a disproportionate share of many crimes.Finally, the third essay, Parental unemployment and children’s school performance, considers another possible indirect effect of unemployment, namely the school performance of the children of the unemployed. I use Swedish data on individual GPA from the completion of primary school at age 16 and final grades from upper secondary school for a majority of all children completing primary school in 1990 directly moving on to three years of upper secondary school, which they complete in 1993. The empirical method builds on the idea that primary school GPA can be used to control for family and individual heterogeneity. The huge variation in Swedish unemployment during the beginning of the 1990s, which can be traced to macroeconomic events, provides an ideal setting for testing the hypothesis that parental unemployment affects children’s school performance. The main results can be summarized as follows. If a mother is subjected to an unemployment spell during the period when one of her children attends upper secondary school, the school performance of the child marginally improves. This implies that, for women, the positive effect of having extra time on your hands exceeds the negative effects of the disadvantages caused by unemployment. This positive effect of having an unemployed mother seems to increase with the length of the unemployment spell. On the opposite, having a short-term unemployed father has a negative effect on a child’s school performance while the effect is insignificant for long-term paternal unemployment. The fact that a long-term unemployment spell of the father has a less clear effect could be interpreted as the shock of unemployment wearing out. One explanation for the differing results across genders could be that women in general cope better with being unemployed and hence are able to use their new extra time doing something productive, such as spending quality time with their children.
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| 41. |
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