Calendrier du 17 avril 2018
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 17/04/2018 de 17:00 à 18:00
Jourdan - R1-13
BREBION Clément (PSE)
The 'strategic discrimination' of works councillors in Germany: new evidence of the demise of a model?
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 17/04/2018 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
FABRE Adrien (PSE)
French Favored Redistribution Derived From Surveys: A Political Assessment of Optimal Tax Theory
An original method of estimating desired income tax rates ispresented, which is in turn usedto assess the political acceptability of the optimal tax theory. Two surveys have been conductedin 2016 to quantify French preferences for income redistribution. In the first survey, respondentspicked their preferred values for parameters which were used to determine the shapes of redistri-butions. These parameters included the proportion of winners and losers from a tax reform, andthe minimum guaranteed income. Using different algorithms,several redistributions were derivedfrom the interpolation of the median choices of each parameter (50% of winners, 10% of losersand a monthly demogrant of 800€). They resulted in transfersfrom high to low incomes of onetenth of the national disposable income. In the second survey, a majority of respondents agreed onimplementing these redistributions. These results are in line with previous literature and robustto alternative specifications. Interestingly, the averagedesired redistribution corresponds closelyto the shape of the optimal taxation derived from an utilitarian criterion. This allowed to showthat this redistribution fails to obtain a significant majority support (contrarily to others), despiteits good reception in a setting inhibiting self-interest. Finally, this study provides evidence thatFrench citizens support a more direct democratic procedureto define the income tax rates, andproposes a way to do so.