About Me
I am a PhD student in Economics at the Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg. My research interests lie at the intersection of public economics and labor economics. I am particularly interested in how (1) tax policies and gender norms interact in reality and how (2) these interactions affect outcomes such as labor supply and household dynamics.
Work in Progress
Withheld from Working More? Withholding Taxes and the Labor Supply of Married Women (with Lenard Simon and Jakob Wegmann)Abstract:
Can the complexity of income tax systems impact labor supply decisions? We study this question in the context of withholding taxes paid by married couples in Germany. In a first step, we document with the help of a survey that less than 20% of the interviewed married individuals understand that withholding taxes are tax prepayments which are fully credited against the final income tax and, therefore, do not determine the income tax burden. Making use of a reform that decreased the withholding tax burden for some married women more than for others, while inducing no differences in income taxes, allows us to then estimate the elasticity of labor income with respect to the withholding tax. In line with our survey findings, we show that women adjust their labor supply following a change in withholding taxes. Importantly, the German institutional setting allows couples to partly redistribute the withholding tax burden from one partner to the other, and the majority shifts parts of the withholding tax burden from the husband to the wife. Our results suggest that the increased withholding tax burden of married women in Germany contributes to their low labor supply. The finding also highlights that governments should be aware that overwithholding results in an overestimation of the actual income tax and thus distorts labor supply incentives.
Teaching
Econometrics III
PhD level
Statistics
Undergraduate
Microeconomics
Undergraduate
Stata Support
Undergraduate
