On the properties of the labour wedge: hours worked and government transfers in perspective

ABSTRACT

Questions surrounding the labour wedge and the tax wedge in the United States are complicated by the fact that, historically, there is a lack of coherent relationship between the series of hours worked (based on standard measurements) and that of the tax wedge. This has been cited as grounds for discounting the tax wedge as a viable explanation for the behaviour of the labour wedge. In this paper, I explore an alternative measurement of labour hours in the United States in a bid to clear up some of the morass surrounding the tax wedge and hours worked. In the process, I show that, the labour wedge is rather more aligned with available labour hours over the business cycle than it does actual hours worked. Moreover, cyclical properties of the available hours series, however puzzling, are explained by the presence of a government transfer scheme which I introduce in the household side of the market. Also, the presence of the transfer scheme alters the marginal rate of substitution (MRS) between consumption and leisure, and by doing so, reverses the cyclical properties of the tax wedge. This puts the tax wedge in alignment with the labour wedge over the business cycle.

KEYWORDS:

• Labour wedge
• tax wedge
• labour hours
• government transfers

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• E13
• E24
• E32

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ (see Hall 1997; Mulligan 2002; Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan 2007; Shimer 2009).