Abstract
Mandated employer provision of social benefits is of rising importance in the United States. As highlighted by Summers (1989), the efficiency losses from such mandates may be much lower than those of taxation due to tax–benefit linkages. I review the theory underlying this observation and the empirical evidence which documents full shifting to wages (and therefore little efficiency cost) of mandated benefits. A host of important questions about mechanisms remains unanswered, however.
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Gruber, J. (2018). Mandated Employer Provision of Employee Benefits. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2814
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2814
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Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95189-5
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