Recherche
PAPIERS & PUBLICATIONS EN ANGLAIS:
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«
Risk-based Selection in Unemployment Insurance:
Evidence and Implications
»
with A. Nekoei, Peter Nilsson, David Seim, & Johannes Spinnewijn
[Abstract]
Abstract:
This paper studies whether adverse selection can rationalize a universal mandate for unemployment insurance (UI). To date no direct evidence exists in
the UI context and the desirability of a UI mandate has been untested. Building on
the unique institutional setting of Sweden, where workers can buy
supplemental UI coverage above a minimum mandate, we provide the first
direct evidence for adverse selection in UI and derive its implications for
UI design. We find that workers who buy the supplemental coverage face higher unemployment risk (with semi-elasticities above 1), even after
controlling for a rich set of observables. Exploiting unique variation in risk and in prices to control for moral hazard, we show how this correlation is driven by substantial risk-based selection. Despite the severe adverse selection, we find that allowing for choice welfare-dominates mandating the supplemental
coverage. We also show that a large subsidy for supplemental coverage
is optimal and complementary to the minimum mandate.
[Slides]
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«
Children and Gender Inequality: Evidence from Denmark
»
with Henrik Kleven & Jakob Sogaard
[Abstract]
Abstract: Despite considerable gender convergence over time, substantial gender inequality persists
in all countries. Using Danish administrative data from 1980-2013 and an event study approach,
we show that most of the remaining gender inequality in earnings is due to children. The arrival
of children creates a gender gap in earnings of around 20% in the long run, driven in
roughly equal proportions by labor force participation, hours of work, and wage rates. Underlying
these ''child penalties'', we find clear dynamic impacts on occupation, promotion to
manager, sector, and the family friendliness of the firm for women relative to men. Based on
a dynamic decomposition framework, we show that the fraction of gender inequality caused
by child penalties has increased dramatically over time, from about 40% in 1980 to about 80%
in 2013. As a possible explanation for the persistence of child penalties, we show that they are
transmitted through generations, from parents to daughters (but not sons), consistent with an
influence of childhood environment in the formation of women's preferences over family and
career.
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FINAL
«
The Optimal Timing of Unemployment Benefits: Theory and Evidence from Sweden
»
with Jonas Kolsrud, Peter Nilsson and Johannes Spinnewijn
forthcoming American Economic Review
[Abstract]
Abstract:
This paper provides a simple, yet robust framework to evaluate the time
profile of benefits paid during an unemployment spell. We derive
sufficient-statistics formulae capturing the marginal insurance value and
incentive costs of unemployment benefits paid at different times during a
spell. Our approach allows us to revisit separate arguments for inclining or
declining profiles put forward in the theoretical literature and to identify
welfare-improving changes in the benefit profile that account for all relevant
arguments jointly. For the empirical implementation, we use administrative
data on unemployment, linked to data on consumption, income and wealth in
Sweden. First, we exploit duration-dependent kinks in the replacement rate and
find that, if anything, the moral hazard cost of benefits is larger when paid
earlier in the spell. Second, we find that the drop in consumption affecting
the insurance value of benefits is large from the start of the spell, but
further increases throughout the spell. In trading off insurance and
incentives, our analysis suggests that the flat benefit profile in Sweden has
been too generous overall. However, both from the insurance and the incentives
side, we find no evidence to support the recent introduction of a declining
tilt in the profile.
[Slides]
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«
Gender Inequality and Economic Development: Fertility, Education, and Norms
»
with Henrik Kleven
Forthcoming Economica - special issue in honor of Frank Cowell
[Abstract]
Abstract: In this paper we document the evolution of gender inequality in labor market outcomes (
earnings, labor supply, and wage rates) across levels of economic development, and discuss
the main reasons for the observed patterns. To this end, we have created a micro database that
compiles 248 surveys from 53 countries between 1967-2014, covering a wide range of per capita
income levels. There is large convergence in the earnings of men and women across levels of
development, driven by female labor force participation and wage rates. We argue that the
single most important factor behind this covergence is demographic transition: the effects of
children on gender gaps ("child penalties") are large at both low and high levels of development,
but fertility declines drastically over the growth process and thus reduces the aggregate
implications of children. We also document gender convergence in educational attainment and
consider its effects on earnings inequality, which are significant but less dramatic than the effects
of fertility. Finally, we document striking changes in the values or norms surrounding the
role of women with children, arguing that such changes may serve as a reinforcing mechanism
for gender convergence.
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«
The Effect of Tax Enforcement on Tax Elasticities:
Evidence from Charitable Contributions in France
»
with Gabrielle Fack
Journal of Public Economics, Volume 133, January 2016, Pages 23-40.
A previous version of the paper was circulated under the title
« Charitable giving and tax policy in the presence of tax
cheating: Theory and evidence from the US and France »
[Abstract]
[Slides]
Abstract: Optimal tax formulas expressed in ``sufficient statistics'' are usually calibrated under the assumption that the relevant tax elasticities are unaffected by other available policy instruments. In practice though, tax authorities have many more instruments than the mere tax rates and tax elasticities are functions of all these policy instruments. In this paper we provide evidence that tax elasticities are extremely sensitive to a particular policy instrument: the level of tax enforcement. We exploit a natural experiment that took place in France in 1983, when the tax administration tightened the requirements to claim charitable deductions. The reform led to a substantial drop in the amount of contributions reported to the administration, which can be credibly attributed to overreporting of charitable contributions before the reform, rather than to a real change in giving behaviours. We show that the reform was also associated with a substantial decline in the absolute value of the elasticity of reported contributions. This finding allows us to partially identify the elasticity of overreporting contributions, which is shown to be large and inferior to -2 in the lax enforcement regime. We further show using bunching of taxpayers at kink-points of the tax schedule that the elasticity of taxable income also experienced a significant decline after the reform. Our results suggest that optimizing the tax rate for a given tax elasticity when other policy instruments are not optimized
can lead to misleading conclusions when tax authorities have another instrument that could set the tax elasticity itself at its optimal level as in Kopczuck & Slemrod [2002]
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«
Market Externalities of Large Unemployment Insurance
Extension Programs
»
with Rafael Lalive & Josef Zweimuller
American Economic Review 105(12): 3564-3596, 2015.
[Abstract]
[Slides]
[Online Appendix]
[Data & Programs]
Abstract
This paper offers quasi experimental evidence of the existence of spillover effects of UI extensions using a unique program that extended unemployment benefits drastically for a subset of workers in selected regions of Austria. We use non-eligible unemployed in treated regions, and a difference-in-difference identification strategy to control for preexisting differences across treated and untreated regions. We uncover the presence of important spillover effects: in treated regions, as the search effort of treated workers plummets, the job finding probability of untreated workers increases, and their average unemployment duration and probability of long term unemployment decrease. These effects are the largest when the program intensity reaches its highest level, then decrease and disappear as the program is scaled down and finally interrupted.
We use this evidence to assess the relevance of different assumptions on technology and the wage setting process in equilibrium search and matching models and discuss the policy implications of our results for the EUC extensions in the US.
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«
Assessing the Welfare Effects of Unemployment Benefits Using the Regression Kink Design
»
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 7(4): 243-278, 2015.
[Abstract]
[Slides]
[Online Appendix]
[Data & Programs]
Abstract:
I show how, in the tradition of the dynamic labor supply literature, one can identify the moral
hazard effects and liquidity effects of unemployment insurance (UI) using variations along the
time profile of unemployment benefits brought about by exogenous variations in the benefit
level as well as in the benefit duration. I use this strategy to investigate the anatomy of partial
equilibrium labor supply responses to unemployment insurance (UI) in the US. I use administrative
data on the universe of unemployment spells in five states from the late 1970s to 1984,
and non-parametrically identify the effect of both benefit level and potential duration in the
regression kink (RK) design using kinks in the schedule of UI benefits. I provide various tests
for the robustness of the RK design, and assess its validity to overcome the traditional issue of
endogeneity in UI benefit variations on US data. My results suggest that the response of search
effort to UI benefits is driven almost as much by liquidity effects as by moral hazard effects,
with an estimated ratio of liquidity to moral hazard effect of 88%. I then use these estimates to
calibrate the welfare effects of an increase in UI benefit level and in UI potential duration.
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«
Migration and Wage Effects of Taxing Top Earners:
Evidence from the Foreigners' Tax Scheme in Denmark
»
with Henrik Kleven & Emmanuel Saez & Esben Schultz
Quarterly Journal of Economics , 129 (1): 333-378, 2014.
[Abstract]
[Slides]
Abstract: This paper analyzes the effects of income taxation on the international migration and
earnings of top earners using a Danish preferential foreigner tax scheme and population-
wide Danish administrative data. This scheme, introduced in 1991, allows new immigrants
with high earnings to be taxed at a preferential
at rate for a duration of three years. We
obtain three main results. First, the scheme has doubled the number of highly paid
foreigners in Denmark relative to slightly less paid ineligible foreigners, which translates
into a very large elasticity of migration with respect to the net-of-tax rate on foreigners,
between 1.5 and 2. Hence, preferential tax schemes for highly paid foreign workers could
create severe tax competition between countries. Second, we find compelling evidence of
a negative effect of scheme-induced increases in the net-of-tax rate on pre-tax earnings at
the individual level. This finding cannot be explained by the standard labor supply model
where pay equals marginal productivity, but it can be rationalized by a matching frictions
model with wage bargaining where there is a gap between pay and marginal productivity.
Third, we find no evidence of positive or negative spillovers of the scheme-induced influx
of high-skilled foreigners on the earnings of highly paid natives.
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«
Are Tax Incentives For Charitable Giving
Efficient? Evidence from France
»
with Gabrielle Fack
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2(2): 117-41, 2010.
[Abstract]
Abstract: This paper estimates the effect of tax incentives for charitable contributions in France.
We focus on two tax reforms, which took place in 2003 and 2005, that increased the non
refundable tax credit rate for charitable contributions by 32%. We use a difference-in-
difference identification, comparing the evolution of contributions for groups of households
with similar income but different taxable status due to differences in family size. We control for censoring issues and investigate distributional effects using a three-step censored
quantile regression estimator. We find that the elasticity of contributions with respect to
tax subsidy is relatively small, between -0.2 and -0.6. We also show that the response to
tax incentive tends to increase with the level of gifts.
EN FRANCAIS:
OUVRAGES:
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«
Cultural assimilation in France
» (with Y. Algan & C. Senik),
in Cultural integration in Europe ,
(Y. Algan & A. Manning eds), CEPR/Oxford University Press, a paraitre, 2010
PUBLICATIONS NON-ACADEMIQUES: