Research
Selected Works in Progress for International Academic Journals
Tax Disincentives to Formal Employment in Latin America, with Olivier Bargain and Xavier Jara, Submitted March 2024
Abstract: To finance increased public spending and social programs, Latin America's tax systems need to develop further. Yet taxation can reduce the tax base by discouraging formal employment. Evidence on the intensity of the problem is limited and tends to focus on specifically large reforms of the tax system. Conversely, and to improve external validity, we study whether routine changes in tax policies also alter labor market formalization. Our approach is based on grouped-data estimations of formal employment responses to policy changes. We exploit tax variation across three countries (Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia) and three periods (2008, 2014/15, 2019). We use precise calculations of counterfactual tax burdens when moving from informal to formal jobs, i.e. formalization tax rates (FTRs). For most countries and pairs of years, FTRs have a negative and significant effect on formal employment, particularly when wages are held constant across periods – in order to extract the pure policy effect – and in a series of sensitivity checks.
The In's and Out's of Mexican Informal Employment
Self-perception of income and its link to Social Unrest in Latin America
Disentangling Investment and Heterogeneous Informal Employment
Decomposing the evolutions of Inequality and Poverty and poverty from tax-benefit reforms in South-America
The link between Erradication Policies and Unexpected Crime in Colombia : An IV approach
Press & Media Presence
Do taxes really redistribute wealth ? (05/2023)
There are more billionaires called Jeff than afro-american billionaires - and other inequalities (09/2023)
Inequalities: Well-being is also a matter of subjective placement (12/2023)
Do not fear! - the real economic consequences of migration (02/2024)
https://lacledesondes.fr/audio/les-cles-de-l-eco-2024-02-13m.mp3
The Paradox of rationality and game theory (04/2024)
https://lacledesondes.fr/audio/les-cles-de-l-eco-2024-04-02M.mp3