Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/51758 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 5820
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Despite numerous studies on labor supply, the size of elasticities is rarely comparable across countries. In this paper, we suggest the first large-scale international comparison of elasticities, while netting out possible differences due to methods, data selection and the period of investigation. We rely on comparable data for 17 European countries and the US, a common empirical approach and a complete simulation of tax-benefit policies affecting household budgets. We find that wage-elasticities are small and vary less across countries than previously thought, e.g., between .2 and .6 for married women. Results are robust to several modeling assumptions. We show that differences in tax-benefit systems or demographic compositions explain little of the cross-country variation, leaving room for other interpretations, notably in terms of heterogeneous work preferences. We derive important implications for research on optimal taxation.
Subjects: 
household labor supply
elasticity
taxation
Europe
US
JEL: 
C25
C52
H31
J22
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
642.15 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.