Source: Wikimedia Commons: author, Today Testing (https://todaytesting.com)In his Budget on 29 October, the UK Chancellor, Philip Hammond, announced a new type of tax. This is a ‘digital services tax’, which, after consultation, he is planning to introduce in April 2020. The target of the tax is the profits made by major companies providing social media platforms (e.g. Facebook and Twitter), internet marketplaces (e.g. Amazon and eBay) or search engines (such as Alphabet’s Google).
The proposed digital services tax is a 2% tax on the revenues earned by such companies in the UK. It would only apply to large companies, defined as those whose global revenue is at least £500m a year. It is expected to raise around £400m per year.
The EU is considering a similar tax at a rate of 3%. India, Pakistan, South Korea and several other countries are considering introducing digital taxes. Indeed, many countries are arguing for a worldwide agreement on such a tax. The OECD is studying the implications of the possible use of such a tax by its 36 members. If an international agreement on such a tax can be reached, a separate UK tax may not go ahead. As the Chancellor stated in his Budget speech:
In the meantime we will continue to work at the OECD and G20 to seek a globally agreed solution. And if one emerges, we will consider adopting it in place of the UK Digital Services Tax.
The proposed UK tax is a hybrid between direct and indirect taxes. Like corporation tax, a direct tax, its aim is to tax companies’ profits. But, unlike corporation tax, it would be harder for such companies to avoid. Like VAT, an indirect tax, it would be a tax on revenue, but, unlike VAT, it would be an ‘end-stage’ tax rather than a tax on value added at each stage of production. Also, it would not be a simple sales tax on companies as it would be confined to revenue (such as advertising revenue) earned from the use in the UK of search engines, social media platforms and online marketplaces. As the Chancellor said in his speech.
It is important that I emphasise that this is not an online-sales tax on goods ordered over the internet: such a tax would fall on consumers of those goods – and that is not our intention.
There is, however, a political problem for the UK in introducing such a tax. The main companies it would affect are American. It is likely that President Trump would see such taxes as a direct assault on the USA and could well threaten retaliation. As the Accountancy Age article states, ‘Dragging the UK into an acrimonious quarrel with one of its largest trading partners is perhaps not what the Chancellor intends.’ This will be especially so as the UK seeks to build new trading relationships with the USA after Brexit. As the BBC article states, ‘The chancellor will be hoping that an international agreement rides to his rescue before the UK tax has to be imposed.’
Policymakers around the world have used Gross Domestic Product as the main gauge of economic performance – and have often adopted policies that aim to maximise its rate of growth. Generation after generation of economists have committed significant time and effort to thinking about the factors that influence GDP growth, on the premise that an expanding and healthy economy is one that sees its GDP increasing every year at a sufficient rate.
But is economic output a good enough indicator of national economic wellbeing? Costanza et al (2014) (see link below) argue that, despite its merits, GDP can be a ‘misleading measure of national success’:
GDP measures mainly market transactions. It ignores social costs, environmental impacts and income inequality. If a business used GDP-style accounting, it would aim to maximize gross revenue — even at the expense of profitability, efficiency, sustainability or flexibility. That is hardly smart or sustainable (think Enron). Yet since the end of the Second World War, promoting GDP growth has remained the primary national policy goal in almost every country. Meanwhile, researchers have become much better at measuring what actually does make life worthwhile. The environmental and social effects of GDP growth is a misleading measure of national success. Countries should act now to embrace new metrics.
The limitations of GDP growth as a measure of economic wellbeing and national strength are becoming increasingly clear in today’s world. Some of the world’s wealthiest countries are plagued by discontent, with a growth in populism and social discontent – attitudes which are often fuelled by high rates of poverty and economic hardship. In a recent report titled ‘The Living Standards Audit 2018’ published by the Resolution Foundation, a UK economic thinktank (see link below), the authors found that child poverty rose in 2016–17 as a result of declining incomes of the poorest third of UK households:
While the economic profile of UK households has changed, living standards – with the exception of pensioner households – have mostly stagnated since the mid-2000s. Typical household incomes are not much higher than they were in 2003–04. This stagnation in living standards for many has brought with it a rise in poverty rates for low to middle income families. Over a third of low to middle income families with children are in poverty, up from a quarter in the mid-2000s, and nearly two-fifths say that they can’t afford a holiday away for their children once a year. On the other hand, the share of non-working families in poverty has fallen, though not by enough to prevent an overall rise in poverty since 2010.
Their projections also show that this rise in poverty was likely to have continued in 2017–18:
Although the increase in broad measures of inequality were relatively muted last year, our nowcast suggests that there was a pronounced rise in poverty (measured after housing costs[…]. The increase in overall poverty (from 22.1 to 23.2 per cent) was the largest since 1988. But this was dwarfed by the increase in child poverty, which rose from 30.3 per cent to 33.4 per cent. […]The fortunes of middle-income households diverged from those towards the bottom of the distribution and so a greater share of households, and children, found themselves below the poverty threshold.
A simple literature search on Scope (or even Google Scholar) shows that there has been a significant increase in the number of journal articles and reports in the last 10 years on this topic. We do talk more about the limitations of GDP, but we are still using it as the main measure of national economic performance.
Is it then time to stop focusing our attention on GDP growth exclusively and start considering broader metrics of social development? And what would such metrics look like? Both interesting questions that we will try to address in coming blogs.
Hearing before the Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce, Trade, and Tourism of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (12/3/08)
Questions
What are the main strengths and weakness of using GDP as measure of economic performance?
Is high GDP growth alone enough to foster economic and social wellbeing? Explain your answer using examples.
Write a list of alternative measures that could be used alongside GDP-based metrics to measure economic and social progress. Explain your answer.
I admit it, the title of my blog today is a little bit misleading – but at the same time very appropriate for today’s topic. Nancy Sinatra certainly wasn’t thinking about emigration when she was singing this song – it had nothing to do with it, after all. It is, however, very relevant to economists: Indeed, there are many economics papers discussing the effects of skilled immigration on host and source economies and regions.
Economists often use the term ‘brain drain’ to describe the migration of highly skilled workers from poor/developing to rich/developed economies. Such flows are anything but unusual. As The Economist points out in a recent article, ‘[I]n the decade to 2010–11 the number of university-educated migrants in the G20, a group of large economies that hosts two-thirds of the world’s migrants, grew by 60% to 32m according to the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries.’.
The effects of international migration are found to be overwhelmingly positive for both skilled migrant workers and their hosts. This is particularly true for highly skilled workers (such as academics, physicians and other professionals), who, through emigration, get the opportunity to earn a significantly higher return on their skills that what they might have had in their home country. Very often their home country is saturated and oversupplied with skilled workers competing for a very limited number of jobs. Also, they get the opportunity to practise their profession – which they might not have had otherwise.
But what about their home countries? Are they worse off for such emigration?
There are different views when it comes to answering this question. One argument is that the prospect of international migration incentivises people in developing countries to accumulate skills (brain gain) – which they might not choose to do otherwise, if the expected return to skills was not high enough to warrant the effort and opportunity cost that comes with it. Beine et al (2011) find that:
Our empirical analysis predicts conditional convergence of human capital indicators. Our findings also reveal that skilled migration prospects foster human capital accumulation in low-income countries. In these countries, a net brain gain can be obtained if the skilled emigration rate is not too large (i.e. it does not exceed 20–30% depending on other country characteristics). In contrast, we find no evidence of a significant incentive mechanism in middle-income, and not surprisingly, high-income countries.
Other researchers find that emigration can have a significant negative effect on source economies (countries or regions) – especially if it affects a large share of the local workforce within a short time period. Ha et al (2016), analyse the effect of emigration on human capital formation and economic growth of Chinese provinces:
First, we find that permanent emigration is conducive to the improvement of both middle and high school enrollment. In contrast, while temporary emigration has a significantly positive effect on middle school enrollment it does not affect high school enrollment. Moreover, the different educational attainments of temporary emigrants have different effects on school enrollment. Specifically, the proportion of temporary emigrants with high school education positively affects middle school enrollment, while the proportion of temporary emigrants with middle school education negatively affects high school enrollment. Finally, we find that both permanent and temporary emigration has a detrimental effect on the economic growth of source regions.
So yes or no? Good or bad? As everything else in economics, the answer quite often is ‘it depends’.
World Development, Michel Beine, Ric Docquier and Cecily Oden-Defoort (Vol 39, No 4, pp 523–532, 2011)
Questions
‘The brain drain makes a bad situation worse, by stripping developing economies of their most valuable assets: skilled workers’. Discuss.
Using Google, find data on the inflows and outflows of skilled labour for a developing country of your choice. Explain your results.
‘Brain drain’ or ‘brain gain’? What is your personal view on this debate? Explain your opinion by using anecdotal evidence, personal experience and examples.
Referring to the previous question, write a critique of your answer.
The median pay of chief executives of the FTSE 100 companies rose 11% in 2017 to £3.93 million per year, according to figures released by the High Pay Centre. By contrast, the median pay of full-time workers rose by just 2%. Given two huge pay increases for the CEOs of Persimmon and Melrose Industries of £47.1 million and £42.8 million respectively, the mean CEO pay rose even more – by 23%, from £4.58 million in 2016 to £5.66 million in 2017. This brings the ratio of the mean pay of FTSE 100 CEOs to that of their employees to 145:1. In 2000, the ratio was around 45:1.
These huge pay increases are despite criticisms from shareholders and the government over excessive boardroom pay awards and the desire for more transparency. In fact, under new legislation, companies with more than 250 employees must publish the ratio of the CEO’s total remuneration to the full-time equivalent pay of their UK employees on the 25th, 50th (median) and 75th percentiles. The annual figures will be for pay starting from the financial year beginning in 2019, which for most companies would mean the year from April 2019 to April 2020. Such a system has been introduced in the USA this year.
So why has the gap in pay widened so much? One reason is that there is no formal mechanism whereby workers can apply downward pressure on such awards. Although Theresa May, in her campaign to become Prime Minister in 2016, promised to put workers on company boards, the government has since abandoned the idea.
Executive pay is awarded by remuneration committees. Membership of such committees consists of independent non-executive directors, but their degree of independence has frequently been called into question and there has been much criticism of such committees being influenced by their highest paying competitors or peers. This has had the effect of ratcheting up executive pay.
Then there is the question of the non-salary element in executive pay. The incentive and bonus payments are often linked to the short-term performance of the company, as reflected in, for example, the company’s share price. In a period when share prices in general rise rapidly – as we have seen over the past two years – executive pay tends to rise rapidly too. A frequent criticism of large UK businesses is that they have been too short-termist. What is more, bonuses are often paid despite poor performance.
There has been some move in recent years to make incentive pay linked more to long-term performance, but this has still led to many CEOs getting large pay increases despite lack-lustre long-term performance.
Then there is the question of shareholders and their influence on executive pay. Despite protests by many smaller shareholders, a large proportion of shares are owned by investment funds and their managers are often only too happy to vote through large executive pay increases at shareholder meetings.
So, while the pressures for containing the rise in executive pay remain small, the pay gap is likely to continue to widen. This raises the whole question of a society becoming increasingly divided between the few at the top and a large number of people ‘just getting by’ – or not even that. Will this make society even more fractured and ill at ease with itself?
How would you set about establishing whether CEOs’ pay is related to their marginal revenue product?
To what extent is executive pay a reflection of oligopolistic/oligopsonistic behaviour?
In what ways can game theory shed light on the process of setting the remuneration packages of CEOs? Is there a Nash equilibrium?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of linking senior executives’ remuneration to (a) short-term company performance; (b) long-term company performance?
What is/are the best indicator(s) of long-term company performance for determining the worth of senior executives?
Consider the arguments for and against capping the ratio of CEOs’ remuneration to a particular ratio of either the mean or median pay of employees. What particular ratio might be worth considering for such a cap?
The Economist is probably not the kind of newspaper that you will read more than once per issue – certainly not two years after its publication date. That is because, by definition, financial news articles are ephemeral: they have greater value, the more recent they are – especially in the modern financial world, where change can be strikingly fast. To my surprise, however, I found myself reading again an article on inequality that I had first read two years ago – and it is (of course) still relevant today.
The title of the article was ‘You may be higher in the global wealth pyramid than you think’ and it discusses exactly that: how much wealth does it take for someone to be considered ‘rich’? The answer to this question is of course, ‘it depends’. And it does depend on which group you compare yourself against. Although this may feel obvious, some of the statistics that are presented in this article may surprise you.
According to the article
If you had $2200 to your name (adding together your bank deposits, financial investments and property holdings, and subtracting your debts) you might not think yourself terribly fortunate. But you would be wealthier than half the world’s population, according to this year’s Global Wealth Report by the Crédit Suisse Research Institute. If you had $71 560 or more, you would be in the top tenth. If you were lucky enough to own over $744 400 you could count yourself a member of the global 1% that voters everywhere are rebelling against.
For many (including yours truly) these numbers may come as a surprise when you first see them. $2200 in today’s exchange rate is about £1640. And this is wealth, not income – including all earthly possessions (net of debt). £1640 of wealth is enough to put you ahead of half of the planet’s population. Have a $774 400 (£556 174 – about the average price of a two-bedroom flat in London) and – congratulations! You are part of the global richest 1% everyone is complaining about…
Such comparisons are certainly thought provoking. They show how unevenly wealth is distributed across countries. They also show that countries which are more open to trade are more likely to have benefited the most from it. Take a closer look at the statistics and you will realise that you are more likely to be rich (compared to the global average) if you live in one of these countries.
Of course, wealth inequality does not happen only across countries – it happens also within countries. You can own a two-bedroom flat in London (and be, therefore, part of the 1% global elite), but having to live on a very modest budget because your income (which is a flow variable, as opposed to wealth, which is a stock variable) has not grown fast enough in relation to other parts of the national population.
Would you be better off if there were less trade? Certainly not – you would probably be even poorer, as trade theories (and most of the empirical evidence I am aware of) assert. Why do we then talk so much about trade wars and trade restrictions recently? Why do we elect politicians who advocate such restrictions? It is probably easier to answer these questions using political than economic theory (although game theory may have some interesting insights to offer – have you heard of the ‘Chicken game‘?). But as I am neither political scientists nor a game theorist, I will just continue to wonder about it.
The proposed digital services tax is a 2% tax on the revenues earned by such companies in the UK. It would only apply to large companies, defined as those whose global revenue is at least £500m a year. It is expected to raise around £400m per year.
Policymakers around the world have used Gross Domestic Product as the main gauge of economic performance – and have often adopted policies that aim to maximise its rate of growth. Generation after generation of economists have committed significant time and effort to thinking about the factors that influence GDP growth, on the premise that an expanding and healthy economy is one that sees its GDP increasing every year at a sufficient rate. 
The limitations of GDP growth as a measure of economic wellbeing and national strength are becoming increasingly clear in today’s world. Some of the world’s wealthiest countries are plagued by discontent, with a growth in populism and social discontent – attitudes which are often fuelled by high rates of poverty and economic hardship. In a recent report titled ‘The Living Standards Audit 2018’ published by the 
I admit it, the title of my blog today is a little bit misleading – but at the same time very appropriate for today’s topic. Nancy Sinatra certainly wasn’t thinking about emigration when she was 
But what about their home countries? Are they worse off for such emigration?
The median pay of chief executives of the FTSE 100 companies rose 11% in 2017 to £3.93 million per year, according to figures released by the 
Executive pay is awarded by remuneration committees. Membership of such committees consists of independent non-executive directors, but their degree of independence has frequently been called into question and there has been much criticism of such committees being influenced by their highest paying competitors or peers. This has had the effect of ratcheting up executive pay.
The Economist is probably not the kind of newspaper that you will read more than once per issue – certainly not two years after its publication date. That is because, by definition, financial news articles are ephemeral: they have greater value, the more recent they are – especially in the modern financial world, where change can be strikingly fast. To my surprise, however, I found myself reading again an article on inequality that I had first read two years ago – and it is (of course) still relevant today.
Of course, wealth inequality does not happen only across countries – it happens also within countries. You can own a two-bedroom flat in London (and be, therefore, part of the 1% global elite), but having to live on a very modest budget because your income (which is a flow variable, as opposed to wealth, which is a stock variable) has not grown fast enough in relation to other parts of the national population.