Research Papers

  • Incentives, productivity and the excess burden of taxation: Evidence from a field experiment (with Bruce Shearer), Job Market Paper, 2022 - [Paper]

    • This study conducts a field experiment to analyze the disincentive effects of labor taxation on productivity (effort) and its associated social costs. Our experiment was conducted in a tree-planting firm in British Columbia where workers are hired to plant trees on given blocks and are paid on a piece rate basis. It involved two basic treatments, applying tax rates of 4 cents and 6 cents per tree with different levels of base wage. This corresponds to marginal tax rates ranging from 15% to 33% depending on the standard piece rate in place on the blocks. We applied both non-structural and structural econometric techniques on this experimental data to measure the effect of taxation on worker's effort and productivity. We show that for an average daily production of 2000 trees per worker and an initial tax rate of 15%, an increase of 10% of the tax rate will induce a decline of daily production of 28 trees per worker. This increases to 39 and 52 trees for initial tax rates of 20% and 25% respectively. Daily average excess burden on experimental observations represents 0.12 of the collected tax revenue with substantial heterogeneity across workers. We generalize our results to tax rates beyond those observed in our experiment and observe that the ratio of the excess burden to tax revenue rises disproportionately with the tax rate attaining more than 0.65 at the tax rate of 0.56 that maximizes tax revenue. Our analysis advocate for a broad-based and low tax rate system.

  • Workers' responses to piece-rate reductions and increases : Evidence from a Field Experiment (with Bruce Shearer), 2022 - [Paper]

    • This paper analyzes workers' reactions to changes in wage rates. We use field experimental data from a treeplanting firm in British Columbia where workers are hired to plant trees on given blocks and are paid on a piece rate basis. We conduct two basic experiments to introduce exogenous variations in the workers piece rate. The first one is a reduction of the worker's piece rate coupled with a base wage. The second one is an increase in the worker's piece rate. At the intensive margin, we measure piece rate effects on productivity accounting for both piece rate reductions and increases. Our study also provides a direct comparison between the impact of wage cuts and pay raises on productivity within the same framework and highlights significant asymmetries in worker's response. It establishes an empirical foundation for downward wage rigidity.

  • Discontinuities in post-secondary schooling and wage gap (with Bernard Fortin), 2022 - [Paper]

    • The paper studies the impact of both permanent and temporary school post-secondary interruptions on wages. While most studies focus on the impact of permanent interruptions, little attention has been accorded so far to the impact of temporary school interruptions. There is however substantial empirical evidence that educational trajectories are discontinuous with episodes of temporary interruptions and re-enrollments. Using longitudinal data from two distinct cohorts of the Youth in Transition Survey in Canada, we provide empirical evidence on the impact of both permanent and temporary school interruptions. Our results are robust across these cohorts and show that there is a very slight wage penalty -less than 5%- associated to both permanent and temporary post-secondary interruption. Our study, however, shows that the wage of temporary interrupters evolves very rapidly compared to leavers and continuers. Indeed, temporary interrupters may benefit from better prospects on the labor market to tailor conveniently their skills. These results are relevant for educational policies.

Policy Papers

  • Strengthening multi-country evidence of COVID-19 on Poverty and Inequality impact and the role of Social Protection, with Tiberti et al. (2021), Partnership for Economic Policy.
  • Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty in MENA countries: Focus on child poverty (2021), Partnership for Economic Policy.
  • The Gambia : A Look at Agriculture, with Rose Mungai (2019), World Bank Group.
  • The Republic of Niger : Building Resilience and Expanding Opportunities for All, A poverty Assessment, with Aly Sanoh et al. (2017), World Bank Group.
  • Welfare and poverty impacts of cocoa price policy reform in Cote d'Ivoire , with Katayama Roy Shuji, Dabalen Andrew L. and Nssah Essama (2017), World Bank Group.
  • Targeting performance of the proxy means test in Cote d'Ivoire , with Katayama Roy Shuji (2016), World Bank Group.