Labor Markets and Redistributive Policies

The GLO Cluster Labor Markets and Redistributive Policies primarily focuses on the role of redistributive policies in shaping work incentives and income distribution.

Taxes and social benefits have direct impact on inequality and poverty but also change work incentives at the intensive margin (hours worked) and the extensive margin (labor market participation). This can be analyzed using a range of ex ante methods (behavioral microsimulation), ex post methods (experiments and quasi-experiments) or a combination of both. This field of research is important to understand past evolution in labor market outcomes and household income distributions, to assess existing systems and national underlying social preferences, and to help policy makers with the design of more optimal redistributive systems.

More broadly, this GLO Cluster includes studies on various aspects of efficiency (including the role of tax avoidance and of informal labor markets), on questions related to vertical equity and horizontal equity, on aspects about individual versus household well-being, and on the question of the optimality of tax shifts between labor, capital and consumption.

Cluster Lead: Olivier Bargain

Olivier Bargain is a Professor of Economics at Bordeaux University, former Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Inequality and Member of the Council of Economic Advisors in France, currently coordinator of the research program ‘HOPE’.

2023 activities:

  • May 4-5: Université Bordeaux, France. Welfare & Policy conference on “Individual and collective responses to a troubled world”. Call & details. Deadline for submitting abstracts or papers: Before 28 February 2023.

2017 activities:

Ends;