Working papers:

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"Optimal income taxation in the presence of networks of altruism", 2020.

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Following the tradition of Mirrlees (1971), static optimal income taxation problems are typically concerned with public redistribution by the State between independent individuals or couples. In this paper, I depart from this independence assumption and account for the interaction between public redistribution and private transfers occurring between individuals within their familial and social networks. Here, individuals value the private utilities of their group’s members and differ in their productivity levels. As a result, they have two dimensions of choice: their productive effort and the transfers they make to other members of their network. I characterize theoretically the optimal linear and non-linear income tax schemes in this context and provide sufficient statistics formulas for both, which highlight how tax design is affected by the existence of altruistic private transfers. I show that public and private redistribution are substitutes but at the optimum, private transfers are only partially crowded-out: the government may rely on these transfers to achieve its equity objective. Depending on the structure of groups, taking into account private redistribution may induce large efficiency gains – a finding I illustrate using numerical simulations. These novel insights can then be applied to a variety of settings, such as those of family taxation and of taxation in developing countries, for which I document the structure and nature of informal transfers using the World Bank’s Living Standard Measurement Surveys.

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"On the political economy of the income-tax threshold", with Pierre Boyer, 2020. (Draft coming soon)

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The income-tax threshold constitutes an important policy instrument in the tax systems of many modern democracies. Indeed, in many western countries, the proportion of the income-tax paying population has remained surprisingly stable in the past thirty years. We develop a conceptual framework to analyze the political forces affecting the income-tax threshold in non-linear tax systems. First, we study theoretically how reforms of a status quo tax schedule affecting marginal tax rates and the income-tax threshold can be politically feasible. Our main theoretical results show the relationship between the types of reforms considered and the identity of the decisive voters who make them politically feasible. Second, in order to study real-world reforms of the income-tax threshold we derive an empirically applicable formula, which we then apply to the case of France. Simulations of tax reforms reveal that an increase in the number of taxpayers from the status quo is hard to sustain politically and that the observed stability of the French taxpaying population around 50% is a by-product of political constraints.

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"The future of the European project: Survey results from members of national parliaments in France, Italy and Germany", with Sebastian Blesse, Pierre Boyer, Massimo Bordignon, Piergiorgio Carapella, Friedrich Heinemann and Eckhard Janeba, 2020. CEPR Discussion Papers No. 15021.

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Publications:

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"European Economic and Monetary Union reform preferences of French and German parliamentarians", with Pierre Boyer, Sebastian Blesse, Friedrich Heinemann and Eckhart Janeba, 2019. European Union Politics, 20(3), 406-424.

Blog Post Summary.

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"On the Design of Optimal Health Insurance Contracts under Ex Post Moral Hazard", with Pierre Picard and Pierre Martinon, 2018. The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, 43(2), 137-185.

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"Intégration européenne et politiques du marché du travail : Quel consensus entre parlementaires français et allemands ?", with Pierre Boyer, Sebastian Blesse, Friedrich Heinemann and Eckhart Janeba, 2017. Revue d’économie politique, 127(5), 737-759.
 

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Policy reports:

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"Approfondir l’intégration européenne ? Résultats d’une enquête auprès des parlementaires nationaux allemands, français et italiens", with Pierre Boyer and Elie Gerschel, Les notes de l’IPP n°56, July 2020. English version.

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"United We Stand? – Survey Results on the Views of French, German and Italian Parliamentarians on EU and EMU Reforms", with Sebastian Blesse, Pierre Boyer, Massimo Bordignon, Piergiorgio Carapella, Friedrich Heinemann and Eckhard Janeba. ZEW policy brief n° 1, February 2019.

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"Intégration européenne et politiques du marché du travail : Clivages politiques ou nationaux ?", with Pierre Boyer. Notes de l'IPP, n° 30, April 2018.

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Articles in the Press:

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"The next steps of the European project?", with Sebastian Blesse, Pierre Boyer, Massimo Bordignon, Piergiorgio Carapella, Friedrich Heinemann and Eckhard Janeba, VoxEU, August 2020.

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