Taxing Top Wealth: Migration Responses and their Aggregate Economic Implications

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Research question and motivation: Proposals to tax top wealth (e.g., Saez and Zucman, 2019) face a recurring objection in public debate: that the wealthy will emigrate en masse and, because many are entrepreneurs, their departure will inflict large negative spillovers (“trickle-down”) on the broader economy, making wealth taxes self-defeating. Credible evidence on international migration responses to wealth taxes has been scarce due to data limitations and a lack of clean identifying variation. This paper provides such evidence and quantifies the aggregate economic implications.

International Trade Responses to Labor Market Regulations

Research Question. This paper asks whether differences in labor market regulations — specifically payroll taxes and minimum wages — shape countries’ comparative advantage in the cross-border provision of labor-intensive services. The question has broad policy relevance: if lower labor standards confer a systematic trade advantage, countries may face pressure to race to the bottom in labor protections, and political support for economic integration may erode.

Setting and Identification. The paper exploits the EU “posting policy,” a large trade program established in 1959 that allows firms in one EU member state to temporarily send their employees to perform service contracts in another member state. In 2017, posting accounted for roughly one-third of all within-EU trade in services (approximately 2% of EU GDP), involving about 2 million workers (in full-time equivalents) in 2019. The setting is analytically attractive because competing foreign and domestic firms serve the same customers at the same physical location using shared capital, holding most determinants of comparative advantage constant while labor market regulations vary by the firm’s country of origin.

Mathilde Muñoz | Macro Paper Warehouse

Taxing Top Wealth: Migration Responses and their Aggregate Economic Implications

International Trade Responses to Labor Market Regulations