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Did the Tax Cuts Increase Hours of Work? A Statistical Analysis of a Natural Experiment
Author(s) -
Klevmarken N. Anders
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
kyklos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1467-6435
pISSN - 0023-5962
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6435.00124
Subject(s) - economics , tax reform , labour economics , tax credit , inequality , work (physics) , demographic economics , public economics , mathematical analysis , mathematics , mechanical engineering , engineering
Effects on hours worked of cuts in the Swedish income taxes are analyzed using longtitudinal data that cover periods before and after a major tax reform in 1991. The results show that working males probably changed their hours very little as a result of reduced marginal tax rates, while women increased their hours in the order of 10 percent. One can thus conclude that the tax reforms increased gender inequality in workhours. Most of this effect comes directly from the tax changes and not through a change in the after tax net wage, a result that is not explained by a conventional myopic labor supply model with a static budget set.