Payroll Tax Reductions for Minimum Wage Workers: Relative Labor Cost or Cash Windfall Effects?

Pré-publication, Document de travail: This paper uses administrative employer-employee data to uncover the effects of a large payroll tax reduction for minimum-wage workers in France in the 1990s. Exploiting the change in labor costs both at the job level and at the firm level, I find that the number of minimum-wage jobs increases but that these additionnal jobs stem exclusively from firms which had previously very few, or none, minimum wage workers. On the contrary, firms which already employed workers at minimum-wage levels, and thus benefit ex ante from a cash windfall, increase employment irrespective of wage levels. Overall, these results suggest that targeting cash-contrained firms, and not only groups of workers, is key for employment growth.

Auteur(s)

Sophie Cottet

Date de publication
  • 2020
Mots-clés JEL
H22 H25 H32 J23
Mots-clés
  • Payroll taxes
  • Firm behavior
  • Rent sharing
  • Minimum wage
Référence interne
  • PSE Working Papers n°2020-72
Version
  • 1