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Bargain, Olivier
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Bargain, Olivier
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Bargain, Olivier
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Now showing 1 - 10 of 28
- PublicationTax-benefit revealed redistributive preferences over time : Ireland 1987-2005By inverting Saez (2002)'s model of optimal income taxation, we characterize the redistributive preferences of the Irish government between 1987 and 2005. The (marginal) social welfare function revealed by this approach is consistently comparable over time and show great stability despite profound changes in market incomes and important fiscal reforms over the period. Results are robust to numerous checks regarding data, income concepts and elasticities. A comparison with the UK shows marked differences reflecting the narrow political spectrum in Ireland compared to radical changes in British politics over the past 30 years. Some "anomalies" in the revealed social welfare function suggests introducing transfers to the working poor.
402 - PublicationCaught in the trap? The disincentive effect of social assistanceWhile …financial incentives usually have a signifi…cant effect on the labor supply of married women and single mothers, the evidence about the participation elasticity of childless singles, and single males especially, is more scant. This is, however, important in countries like France and Germany, where single individuals constitute the core of social assistance recipients. As yet, there is no conclusive evidence about whether, and to what extent, this group is affected by the fi…nancial disincentives embedded in the generous redistributive programs in place in these countries. In this paper, we exploit a particular feature of the main welfare scheme in France (Revenu Minimum d'Insertion, RMI), namely that childless adults under age 25 are not eligible for it. Using a regression discontinuity approach and the French micro-census data, we …find that the RMI reduces the employment of uneducated single men by 7% - 10%. Important policy implications are drawn.
329 - PublicationOptimal Commodity Taxation and Redistribution within HouseholdsUsing a collective model of consumption, we characterize optimal commodity taxes aimed at targeting speci fic individuals within the household. The main message is that distortionary indirect taxation can circumvent the agency problem of the household. Essentially, taxation should discourage less the consumption of a certain group of goods: those for which the slope of the Engel curves is larger for the targeted person.
244 - PublicationNo claim, no pain - measuring the non-take-up of social assistance using register data(University College Dublin. School of Economics, 2009-12)
; ; The main objectives of social assistance bene…fits, including poverty alleviation and labor-market or social reintegration, can be seriously compromised if support is difficult to access. While recent studies point to high non-take-up rates, existing evidence does not make full use of the information recorded by benefi…t agencies. Most studies have to rely on interview-based data, with misreporting and measurement errors affecting the variables needed to establish both bene…fit receipt and benefi…t entitlement. In this paper, we exploit a unique combination of Finnish administrative data and eligibility simulations based on the tax-benefi…t calculator of the Finnish authorities, carefully investigating the measurement issues that remain. We …nd rates of non-take-up that are both substantial and robust: 40% to 50% of those eligible do not claim. Using repeated cross-section estimations for years 1996-2003, we identify a set of stable determinants of claiming behavior and suggest that changes in behavior could drive the observed downward trend in take-up rates during the post-recession period. We discuss the poverty implications of our results.635 - PublicationRevisiting the cost of children : theory and evidence from IrelandIn this paper, we suggest a collective model with parents and (young) children. We identify and estimate scale economies in households and the sharing rule between husband, wife and children. While adult shares and economies of scale are identi…ed thanks to the estimation of individual Engel curves on single individuals, the identi…cation of the resource share accruing to children (the cost of children) requires the observation of adult-speci…c goods as in the traditional Rothbarth method. The useful aspect of the present approach is that it requires only the estimation of Engel curves on cross-sectional data, i.e. price variation is not required. This is an advan- tage for many countries where price variations is indeed limited, as in our application on Irish data.
183 - PublicationOptimal taxation, social contract and the four worlds of welfare capitalismDrawing from the formal setting of the optimal tax theory (Mirrlees 1971), the paper identifies the level of Rawlsianism of some European social planner starting from the observation of the real data and redistribution systems and uses it to build a metric that allows measuring the degree of (dis)similarity of the redistribution systems analyzed. It must be considered as a contribution to the comparative research on the structure and typology of the Welfare State (Esping-Andersen, 1990). In particular we consider the optimal taxation model that combines both intensive (Mirrlees) and extensive (Diamond) margins of labor supply, as suggested by Saez (2002) in order to assess the degree of decommodification of seven European welfare systems. We recover the shape of the social welfare function implicit in taxbenefit systems by inverting the model on actual effective tax rates, as if existing systems were optimal according to some Mirrleesian social planner. Actual distributions of incomes before and after redistribution are obtained using a pan-European tax-benefit microsimulation model. Results are discussed in the light of standard classifications of welfare regimes in Europe. There appears to be a clear coincidence of high decommodification and high Rawlsianism in the Scandinavian, social-democratically influenced welfare states (Denmark). There is an equally clear coincidence of low decommodification and utilitarianism in the Anglo–Saxon liberal model (UK) and in the Southern European welfare states (Italy and Spain). Finally, the Continental European countries (Finland, Germany and France) group closely together in the middle of the scale, as corporatist and etatist.
348 - PublicationThe formal sector wage premium and firm size for self-employed workers(University College Dublin. School of Economics, 2012-03)
; ; ; ; We develop a model where workers may enter self-employment or search for jobs as employees and where there is heterogeneity across workers’ managerial ability. Workers with higher skills will manage larger firms while workers with low managerial ability will run smaller firms and will be in self-employment only when they cannot find a salaried job. For these workers self-employment is a secondary/informal form of employment. The Burdett and Mortensen (1998) equilibrium search model is used for illustration as a special case of our more general framework. Empirical evidence from Mexico is provided and demonstrates that firm size wage effects for employees and self-employed workers are broadly consistent with the model.183 - PublicationThe distributional effects of tax-benefit policies under New Labour : a Shapley decompositionUsing counterfactual microsimulations, Shapley decompositions of time change in inequality and poverty indices make it possible to disentangle and quantify the relative effect of tax-benefi…t policy changes, compared to all other effects including shifts in the distribution of market income. Using this approach also helps to clarify the different issues underlying the distributional evaluation of policy reforms. An application to the UK (1998-2001) con…firms previous fi…ndings that inequality and depth of poverty would have increased under the …first New Labour government, had important reforms like the extensions of income support and tax credits not been implemented. These reforms have also contributed to substantially reduce poverty among families with children and pensioners.
230 - PublicationThe measurement of child costs : a Rothbarth-type method consistent with scale economiesWe propose a new methodology to estimate the share of household income accruing to children (i.e., the cost of children). Following the principle of the Rothbarth approach, the identi…cation of the children's share requires the observation of at least one adult-speci…c good. However, our method differs from this traditional approach in that it allows measuring economies of scale in the household and indifference scales in Lewbel (2003)'s sense. We illustrate the method with an application on the French Household Budget Survey.
370 - PublicationIs informality bad? Evidence from Brazil, Mexico and South AfricaThe informal sector plays an important role in the functioning of labor markets in emerging economies. To characterize better this highly heterogeneous sector, we conduct a distributional analysis of the earnings gap between informal and formal employment in Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, distinguishing between dependent and independent workers. For each country, we use rich panel data to estimate fi…xed effects quantile regressions to control for (time-invariant) unobserved heterogeneity. The dual nature of the informal sector emerges from our results. In the high-tier segment, self-employed workers receive a signi…cant earnings premium that may compensate the bene…fits obtained in formal jobs. In the lower end of the earnings distribution, both informal wage earners and independent (own account) workers face signi…cant earnings penalties vis-à -vis the formal sector. Yet the dual structure is not balanced in the same way in all three countries. Most of the self-employment carries a premium in Mexico. In contrast, the upper-tier segment is marginal in South Africa, and informal workers, both dependent and independent, form a largely penalized group. More consistent with the competitive view, earnings differentials are small at all levels in Brazil.
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