Is the Impact of Labor Taxes on Unemployment Asymmetric?

This paper tests whether increases and decreases in labor taxes have an asymmetric impact on unemployment. Using a panel of 16 OECD countries over the period 1970–2005, we estimate a panel unobserved-component model to account for the fact that unemployment rates and labor taxes are nonstationary but not cointegrated. We find a positive impact of labor tax increases on unemployment in European and Nordic countries, whereas for labor tax decreases, no significant impact is found in these countries. For Anglo-Saxon countries, neither increases nor decreases in labor taxes have any impact on unemployment.