NBER Working Papers · 2026 · David W. Berger、Kyle F. Herkenhoff、Jaehun Jeong、Simon Mongey
中文摘要
企业如何设定工资？政府应如何设定所得税？如果劳动供给对工资缺乏弹性，企业便可向劳动者支付低于其边际产出的工资，而政府也可在不侵蚀税基的情况下提高税收。然而，经济中劳动供给弹性的结构十分复杂。近期实证研究记录了劳动供给弹性在劳动者、企业和调整边际（选择在哪家企业工作与选择工作多少小时）之间的差异。为刻画这种丰富的劳动供给弹性结构，我们扩展了新古典模型，纳入对就职企业的离散选择、生产互补性，以及异质且颗粒化企业之间的策略互动。在工资设定方面，我们发现，劳动者异质性带来的新效应解释了劳动供给弹性和工资折价可变部分的78%，以及大企业与小企业之间工资折价差异的89%。在政策方面，提高累进程度会降低劳动供给弹性，通过扩大工资折价和恶化匹配来侵蚀税基。这些渠道：(i) 使边际税率提高后收入大幅下降，与实证研究一致；(ii) 使最优税收累进程度降低三分之一，并使相关福利增益减少三分之二。
Abstract
How do firms set wages? How should governments set income taxes? If labor supply is inelastic to wages, firms can pay workers less than their marginal products, and governments can increase taxes without eroding the base. However, the structure of labor supply elasticities in the economy is complex. Recent empirics document variation across workers, firms, and margins (which firm to work at versus how many hours to work). To account for this rich structure of labor supply elasticities we extend the neoclassical model to include a discrete choice over which firm to work at, production complementarities and strategic interaction between heterogeneous, granular firms. In terms of wage setting, we find that novel effects of worker heterogeneity account for 78 percent of the variable component of labor supply elasticities and markdowns, and 89 percent of markdown differences between large and small firms. In terms of policy, higher progressivity makes labor supply less elastic, eroding the tax base by widening markdowns and worsening sorting. These channels (i) produce large declines in earnings following increases in marginal tax rates, consistent with empirical studies, and (ii) reduce optimal tax progressivity by one-third and associated welfare gains by two-thirds.