Do regional payroll tax reductions boost employment?

Helge Bennmarker, Erik Mellander (erik.mellander@ifau.uu.se) and Björn Öckert
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Erik Mellander: IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation, Postal: P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden

No 2008:19, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: Using a Difference-in-Differences approach we evaluate the effects of a 10 percentage points reduction in the payroll tax introduced in 2002 for firms in the northern part of Sweden. We find no employment effects for existing firms and can rule out that a 1 percentage point payroll tax reduction would increase employment with more than 0.2 percent. We do, however, find that tax reductions have significantly positive effects on the average wage bill per employee. These are likely to be driven by higher average wages, but might also be due to more hours worked. As a sensitivity check we investigate if reduced payroll taxes affect the likelihood of firm entry and exit, and find some support for a net firm inflow. Our attempts to assess concomitant effects on employment indicate that payroll tax reductions might yield increases in employment through the start-up of new firms.

Keywords: Payroll tax; Labour demand; Incidence; Firm entry/exit; Difference-in-Differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H22 J23 J38 J58 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2008-09-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-geo, nep-lab and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: Do regional payroll tax reductions boost employment? (2009)
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