Tax policy and labour market in Croatia: effects of tax wedge on employment

Abstract

In this paper we empirically test the importance and the effects of labour taxation on employment in Croatia. The motivation for this analytical inquiry stems from the fact that Croatia is one of the countries with the lowest employment rates in the European Union while at the same time it has relatively high labour tax burden compared to peers and ranks among the countries with most negative perceived effects of taxation on incentives to work. As fiscal policy is the main economic policy instrument in Croatia, it is important to analyse whether fiscal measures can directly affect labour market performance. Our results show that tax policy has significant effect on employment in Croatia which has important policy implications.