Tag Archives: Redistribution

Me Poor? Then We Need Less Redistribution

In the AEJ: Economic Policy, Christopher Hoy and Franziska Mager report that people are less supportive of redistribution when they learn that they are poorer than they thought.

We test a key assumption underlying seminal theories about preferences for redistribution, which is that relatively poor people should be the most in favor of redistribution. … people who are told they are relatively poorer than they thought are less concerned about inequality and are not more supportive of redistribution. This finding is consistent with people using their own living standard as a “benchmark” for what they consider acceptable for others.

Income Tax Burdens in Switzerland

In the NZZ, Hansueli Schöchli summarizes recent evidence.

Wer in der Schweiz im Jahr 2017 wie viel Einkommenssteuer bezahlte

Anteil Steuerpflichtige (in Prozent) Anzahl Steuerpflichtige Minimales Reineinkommen in Fr. Durchschnittliche Steuerbelastung (in %) Anteil der Einkommenssteuer Bund/Kanton/Gemeinde (in %)
0,01 515 4 548 020 43,8 4,82
0,1 5 150 1 109 760 37,3 9,89
1 51 498 331 731 34,4 24,04
5 257 489 152 799 28,1 42,55
10 514 978 111 403 24,6 53,03
25 1 287 444 73 769 20,7 74,13
50 2 574 888 49 989 18 90,24
Lesebeispiel: Die obersten 0,01% der Steuerpflichtigen deklarierten ein Reineinkommen von jeweils über 4,5 Mio. Fr. Sie hatten im Mittel eine Steuerbelastung auf ihren Einkommen von 43,8%. Diese Gruppe zahlte insgesamt 4,8% aller Einkommenssteuern in der Schweiz.
Quelle: Christian Frei, Economiesuisse NZZ / hus.

… Hinzu kommen noch die Abgaben auf hohen Löhnen für AHV/IV/EO sowie für die Arbeitslosenversicherung. In der AHV sind Abgaben auf Löhnen über rund 86 000 Fr. nicht mehr rentenbildend und deshalb faktisch Steuern. Bei der Arbeitslosenversicherung gilt dies für Abgaben auf Löhnen über 148 200 Fr. Für hohe Löhne bedeutet all dies noch eine steuerliche Zusatzbelastung von total 11 bis 12%.

“Wirtschaftspolitik angesichts von Covid-19: Lastenteilung, aber keine Preismanipulationen (Economic Policy Responses to Covid-19: Burden Sharing, But no Price Distortions),” ÖS, 2020

Ökonomenstimme, 3 April 2020. HTML. Shorter version published in NZZ.

The aggregate Covid-19 shock calls for transfers of the type a pandemic insurance would have brought about. But we must not distort relative prices. They have to reflect scarcity, to provide incentives to overcome it. (This applies within countries but also across.)

“Preise müssen sich frei bilden können (Prices Must Reflect Scarcity),” NZZ, 2020

NZZ, 2 April 2020. PDF.

The aggregate Covid-19 shock calls for transfers of the type a pandemic insurance would have brought about. But we must not distort relative prices. They have to reflect scarcity, to provide incentives to overcome it. (This applies within countries but also across.)

Redistribution at the EU Level

On VoxEU, Paolo Pasimeni and Stéphanie Riso argue that at the EU level, cross-border redistribution is limited:

The EU budget accounts for roughly 1% of the EU’s GDP. Around 80% of it, on average, returns back to each country in the form of various allocated expenditures, and only a limited part is actually redistributed among countries. On average over the past 15 years, the redistribution operated by the budget at the level of the EU was equal to 0.2% of the Union’s GDP. As a matter of comparison, the average yearly cross-border flows operated through the federal budget in the US between 1980-2005 was equal to 1.5% of GDP (d’Apice 2015).

Redistribution From Unexpected Deflation in the Euro Area

In the JEEA 14(4) (August 2016) Klaus Adam and Junyi Zhu argue that

unexpected price-level movements generate sizable wealth redistribution in the Euro Area (EA) … The EA as a whole is a net loser of unexpected price-level decreases, with Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain losing most in per capita terms, and Belgium and Malta being net winners. Governments are net losers of deflation, while the household (HH) sector is a net winner … HHs in Belgium, Ireland, Malta, and Germany experience the biggest per capita gains, while HHs in Finland and Spain turn out to be net losers. … relatively young middle class HHs are net losers of deflation, while older and richer HHs are winners. … wealth inequality in the EA increases with unexpected deflation, although in some countries (Austria, Germany, and Malta) inequality decreases due to the presence of relatively few young borrowing HHs. … HHs in high-inflation EA countries hold… systematically lower nominal exposures.

The table reports the estimated effects of a one-time unexpected change in the general price level by 10% (expressed either in thousand EUR per capita, or as a share of GDP); a positive sign indicates a gain from deflation.

Government
(1000 EUR p.c.)		Households
(1000 EUR p.c.)		ROW
(1000 EUR p.c.)		Government
(share of GDP)		Households
(share of GDP)		ROW
(share of GDP)
Euro Area−18.67.810.8−0.730.300.42
Austria−21.711.610.1−0.700.370.32
Belgium−27.640.8−13.2−0.931.37−0.44
Cyprus−9.9−7.217.0−0.52−0.380.89
Finland−3.0−8.411.3−0.10−0.270.37
France−22.310.611.7−0.810.390.43
Germany−17.415.32.2−0.600.530.08
Greece−22.9−1.224.1−1.34−0.071.41
Ireland−19.221.8−2.6−0.540.61−0.07
Italy−23.28.115.1−0.990.350.64
Luxembourg22.712.0−34.70.350.18−0.53
Malta−8.320.1−11.8−0.631.52−0.89
Netherlands−16.5−9.525.9−0.50−0.290.78
Portugal−13.1−0.213.3−0.88−0.010.89
Slovakia−4.82.22.6−0.540.240.29
Slovenia−8.62.95.7−0.560.190.37
Spain−12.4−6.719.1−0.60−0.320.93

Deposit Insurance: Economics and Politics

On VoxEU, Charles Calomiris and Matthew Jaremski discuss the origins of bank liability insurance. They argue that it is redistribution, not the aim to boost efficiency, which explains a lot of the action.

… there are two theoretical approaches to explaining the creation and expansion of deposit insurance. The first is an economic approach grounded in potential efficiency gains from limiting bank runs (i.e. the public interest motivation). The second is a political approach grounded in the rising power of special interest groups that favoured insurance as a means to access subsidies (i.e. the private interest motivation).

… Because insurance reduces the incentive for market discipline, it may increase fundamental insolvency risk … whether, on balance, bank liability insurance reduces or increases risk … is an empirical question. Economic theories of liability insurance only make sense on economic grounds if the gains from liquidity risk reduction tend to exceed the moral hazard or adverse selection costs from reduced market discipline.

… Political models seek to explain why liability insurance may be chosen to favour certain groups in society even when it imposes large costs on society in the form of higher systemic risk for banks. In this context, liability insurance needs to be understood as part of an equilibrium political bargain achieved by a winning political coalition. …

… we review empirical evidence about, first, which factors are shown to be instrumental in creating bank liability insurance; and second, evidence about the consequences of passing insurance … We find that political theories are much more consistent with both sets of evidence.

… the historical push for liability insurance in the US came from a coalition of small rural bankers and landowning farmers …

Worldwide, bank liability insurance remained a unique (and controversial) policy choice of the US until the late 1950s, but it spread rapidly throughout the world in recent decades …

Like the adoption of liability insurance in the US, the recent global wave of legislation creating and expanding insurance can also be traced to political influences. …

The expansion of liability insurance has been generally associated with reductions in banking system stability …

The political theories of liability insurance point to a major political advantage. It provides an effective means for a government to supply hard-to-trace subsidies to particular classes of bank borrowers … agricultural borrowers or urban mortgage borrowers …

Liability insurance can create a subsidy for banks (which they can pass through, in part, to borrowers) only if prudential regulation and supervision permit banks to take risks at the expense of the insurer. Thus, lax regulation and supervision are an important part of the political bargain that allows liability insurance to deliver subsidies to banks and targeted borrowers. …

Spending Inequality

In a New Republic blog, Alan Auerbach and Larry Kotlikoff discuss lifetime spending inequality. Due to taxes and income variability over the life cycle, this is much smaller than wealth or income inequality.

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Auerbach and Kotlikoff write:

The top 1 percent of 40-49 year-olds face a net tax, on average, of 45 percent. … For the bottom 20 percent, the average net tax rate is negative 34.2 percent. …

Our standard means of judging whether a household is rich or poor is based on current income. But this classification can produce huge mistakes. … For example, only 68.2 percent of 40-49 year-olds who are actually in the third resource quintile using our data would be so classified based on current income.

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“Der starke Franken (Strong Swiss Franc),” SRF, 2015

“Der starke Franken: Des einen Freud, des anderen Leid,” SRF 4 News, July 15, 2015. HTML, AUDIO.

  • Who knows whether the Franc is overvalued.
  • The SNB lost credibility in the short run (and this renders reinstating an exchange rate floor difficult), but not in the long run.
  • Some of the current problems are problems of distribution. The SNB may not be the appropriate institution to address them.
  • Switzerland wants an independent monetary policy. Here are some disadvantages.