In English:
Payroll Tax Reductions on Low Wages and Minimum Wage in France (2025) (NEW), with Julien Albertini and Anthony Terriau.
Introduced in France in the 1990s to reduce the cost of low-skilled labor, payroll tax reductions on low wages were later expanded and extended to higher wages. This study evaluates the impact of the current payroll tax schedule on employment, fiscal surplus, and welfare. We develop a life-cycle matching model in which workers are heterogeneous in terms of age, education, human capital, family status, hours worked and idiosyncratic productivity, and where search effort, hiring and separations are endogenous. Accounting for interactions with the socio-fiscal system, we demonstrate that reducing payroll tax cuts for low wages would result in declines in both employment and fiscal surplus. Furthermore, we show that increasing the minimum wage would significantly reduce employment and fiscal surplus, with the magnitude of the effect depending on whether the payroll tax schedule and other socio-fiscal measures are indexed to the minimum wage. Lastly, we identify the optimal payroll tax schedule, revealing that employment, fiscal surplus, and welfare can all be improved by increasing payroll tax reductions for wages near the minimum wage while reducing them for wages exceeding twice the minimum wage.
The impact of EITC on education, labor market trajectories, and inequalities (2021) (new version 2025), with Julien Albertini and Anthony Terriau, R&R (minor) in Review of Economic Studies.Â
As a complement to the federal EITC, some states offer their own EITC, typically calculated as a percentage of the federal EITC. In this paper, we analyze the effect of state EITC on education using policy discontinuities at U.S. state borders. Our estimates reveal that an increase in state EITC leads to a statistically significant drop in high school completion. We then use a life-cycle matching model with directed search and endogenous educational choices, search intensities, hirings, hours worked, and separations to investigate the long-term effects of EITC on labor market dynamics. We show that a tax credit targeted at low-wage (and low-skilled) workers reduces the relative return to schooling, thereby generating a powerful disincentive to pursue long-term studies. In the long run, this results in an increase in the proportion of low-skilled workers in the economy, which may have important implications in terms of employment, productivity, and income inequalities.
A Job vacancy rate for Argentina (2020), with Julien Albertini and Danilo Trupkin.
This paper builds a time series for vacancies in Argentina and shows the path of the Beveridge curve during the period 2000--2018. We use a novel dataset from a survey that collects vacancy postings since 2008 and combine it with a print help-wanted index published from 2000 through 2014. We present, as a result, a job vacancy series long enough to cover six recessions in addition to the 2001 crisis.
Discount factor shocks and labor market dynamics (2014), with Julien Albertini, No. 2014-033. SFB 649 Discussion Paper, 2014.
In this paper we investigate the labor market dynamics in a matching model where fluctuations are driven by movements in the discount factor. A comparison with the standard productivity shock is provided. Movements in the discount factor can be used as a proxy for variations in financial risks, especially the expected payoff from hiring workers. It is shown that the canonical matching model under a very standard calibration is able to generate an important volatility of unemployment and vacancies with respect to output. We estimate the structural model with the two shocks and using the Bayesian methodology. The bulk of variations in unemployment and vacancies is mainly explained by disturbances pertaining to the discount factor. Productivity shocks account for most of the historical output variations but the discount factor plays a more important role over the last two decades.