Analysing tax-benefit reforms in the Netherlands using structural models and natural experiments.

We combine the strengths of structural models and natural experiments in an analysis of tax-benefit reforms in the Netherlands. We first estimate structural discrete-choice models for labour supply. Next, we simulate key past reforms and compare the predictions of the structural model with the outcomes of quasi-experimental studies. The structural model predicts the treatment effects well. The structural model then allows us to conduct counterfactual policy analysis. Policies targeted at working mothers with young children generate the largest labour supply responses but generate little additional government revenue. Introducing a flat tax, basic income or joint taxation is not effective.

The COVID-19 resilience of a continental welfare regime - nowcasting the distributional impact of the crisis.

We evaluate the COVID-19 resilience of a Continental welfare regime by nowcasting the implications of the shock and its associated policy responses on the distribution of household incomes over the whole of 2020. Our approach relies on a dynamic microsimulation modelling that combines a household income generation model estimated on the latest EU-SILC wave with novel nowcasting techniques to calibrate the simulations using external macro controls which reflect the macroeconomic climate during the crisis. We focus on Luxembourg, a country that introduced minor tweaks to the existing tax-benefit system, which has a strong social insurance focus that gave certainty during the crisis. We find the system was well-equipped ahead of the crisis to cushion household incomes against job losses. The income-support policy changes were effective in cushioning household incomes and mitigating an increase in income inequality, allowing average household disposable income and inequality levels to bounce back to pre-crisis levels in the last quarter of 2020. The share of labour incomes dropped, but was compensated by an increase in benefits, reflecting the cushioning effect of the transfer system. Overall market incomes dropped and became more unequal. Their disequalizing evolution was matched by an increase in redistribution, driven by an increase in the generosity of benefits and larger access to benefits. The nowcasting model is a "near" real-time analysis and decision support tool to monitor the recovery, scalable to other countries with high applicability for policymakers. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at doi:10.1007/s10888-021-09524-4.

Welfare Resilience at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Selection of European Countries: Impact on Public Finance and Household Incomes.

This paper assesses the impact on household incomes of the COVID-19 pandemic and governments' policy responses in April 2020 in four large and severely hit EU countries: Belgium, Italy, Spain and the UK. We provide comparative evidence on the level of relative and absolute welfare resilience at the onset of the pandemic, by creating counterfactual scenarios using the European tax-benefit model EUROMOD combined with COVID-19-related household surveys and timely labor market data. We find that income poverty increased in all countries due to the pandemic while inequality remained broadly the same. Differences in the impact of policies across countries arose from four main sources: the asymmetric dimension of the shock by country, the different protection offered by each tax-benefit system, the diverse design of discretionary measures and differences in the household level circumstances and living arrangements of individuals at risk of income loss in each country.

Distributional effects of macroeconomic shocks in real-time: A novel method applied to the COVID-19 crisis in Germany.

The highly dynamic nature of the COVID-19 crisis poses an unprecedented challenge to policy makers around the world to take appropriate income-stabilizing countermeasures. To properly design such policy measures, it is important to quantify their effects in real-time. However, data on the relevant outcomes at the micro level is usually only available with considerable time lags. In this paper, we propose a novel method to assess the distributional consequences of macroeconomic shocks and policy responses in real-time and provide the first application to Germany in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, our approach combines different economic models estimated on firm- and household-level data: a VAR-model for output expectations, a structural labor demand model, and a tax-benefit microsimulation model. Our findings show that as of September 2020 the COVID-19 shock translates into a noticeable reduction in gross labor income across the entire income distribution. However, the tax benefit system and discretionary policy responses to the crisis act as important income stabilizers, since the effect on the distribution of disposable household incomes turns progressive: the bottom two deciles actually gain income, the middle deciles are hardly affected, and only the upper deciles lose income. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10888-021-09489-4.

Did the UK policy response to Covid-19 protect household incomes?

We analyse the UK policy response to Covid-19 and its impact on household incomes in the UK in April and May 2020, using microsimulation methods. We estimate that households lost a substantial share of their net income of 6.9% on average. But policies protected household incomes to a substantial degree: compared to the drop in net income, GDP per capita fell by 18.9% between the first and second quarter of 2020. Earnings subsidies (the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme) protected household finances and provided the main insurance mechanism during the crisis. Besides subsidies, Covid-related increases to state benefits, as well as the automatic stabilisers in the tax and benefit system, played an important role in mitigating the income losses. However, analysing the impact of a near-decade of austerity on the UK safety net, we find that, compared to 2011 policies, the 2020 pre-Covid tax-benefit policies would have been less effective in insuring incomes against the shocks. We also assess the potential distributional impact of introducing a Universal Basic Income (UBI) instead of the Covid emergency measures and find that a UBI would have supported the incomes of different vulnerable groups but would have provided less protection to those hit hardest by the labour market shocks. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10888-021-09491-w.

Conocimiento de los empresarios de Villanueva (Casanare, Colombia) sobre la Ley Zomac / Knowledge of Entrepreneurs of Villanueva Casanare, Colombia, on ZOMAC Law

Resumen La normatividad colombiana plantea que las nuevas sociedades que desarrollen todo el proceso productivo en los municipios denominados Zonas más Afectadas por el Con flicto Armado (Zomac) tendrán beneficios tributarios durante 10 años, consistentes en tarifa progresiva del impuesto de renta a partir del 2017, que varía según el tamaño de la empresa que se obliga a cumplir con requisitos mínimos de inversión y generación de empleo o al pago parcial del impuesto de renta mediante la inversión directa en ejecu ción de proyectos de trascendencia social en las Zomac al obtener ingresos brutos igua les o superiores a treinta y tres mil seiscientos diez (33.610) unidades de valor tributario (UVT). Se realizó un estudio de tipo descriptivo con enfoque mixto (cuantitativo-cuali tativo) para la caracterización de los empresarios, determinar el conocimiento y nivel de acogimiento a la normatividad, aplicándose un cuestionario a los empresarios y una entrevista semiestructurada a personal de los entes municipales y gubernamentales sobre el conocimiento y divulgación sobre lo reglamentado por la ley para las Zomac, permitiendo esclarecer la realidad en la aplicación normativa que plantea incentivos tri butarios para cerrar las brechas de desigualdad socioeconómica en las Zomac.

Abstract Colombian regulations state that new companies that develop the entire production process in municipalities called Zones Most Affected by Armed Conflict (ZOMAC) will have tax benefits for 10 years. They will consist of progressive rate of income tax from 2017, which varies depending on the size of the company that is required to meet mi nimum investment and employment generation requirements or partial payment of income tax through direct investment in execution projects of social significance in the ZOMAC, by obtaining gross income equal to or greater than thirty-three thousand six hundred and ten (33,610) Tax Value Unit. A descriptive type study was carried out with a mixed (quantitative-qualitative) approach to the characterization of entrepreneurs, determine knowledge and level of adherence to regulations, applying a questionnaire to entrepreneurs and a semi-structured interview with staff of municipal and govern ment authorities on knowledge and disclosure of what is regulated by law for ZOMACs, allowing to clarify the reality in the normative application that raises tax incentives to close gaps in socio-economic inequality in the ZOMAC.