engleski

Personal Tax Wedge in Croatia: Does it Hurt Competitiveness?

Labour force competitiveness primarily depends upon the skills structure of labour force, the size of labour supply, and the institutional settings in the labour market. This paper notably focuses on the size of labour supply. The main objective is to find out how the size of the labour supply is affected by the size and the structure of total labour costs. Hierarchical and K- means cluster analysis based on 2006 data for 38 countries (EU and OECD members, plus Croatia) use tax wedge as one of the main competitiveness’ factors. Results show that the countries can be classified into two clusters: (1) countries with low tax wedge and high employment rate, or (2) countries with high tax wedge and high unemployment rate. Croatia resulted as a country with high tax wedge and high unemployment rate. Further discussion in the paper is devoted to challenges of lower tax burden in Croatia.

competitiveness; labour force; employment; unemployment; labour costs; tax wedge; hierarchical cluster analysis; K-means cluster analysis; discriminant analysis; Ward method; dendogram; Croatia.

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