IESET.
Policies·fr_macron_labour_tax_reforms_2017_2019

Macron labour + tax reforms (Ordonnances 2017 + PFU 2018)

FRA·2017 – 2019candidate
moveslabour market flexibility↑tax progressivity↓tax capital↓tax corporate↓

What the policy did

Ordonnances Travail (Sep 2017) reforming French Code du Travail — capping unfair-dismissal damages, opening to company-level collective bargaining, merging employee-representative bodies; CSG-for-chômage swap (workers pay more CSG, employers less unemployment contribution); wealth tax (ISF) reform to real-estate-only (IFI); PFU flat tax on capital income 30%; corporate tax rate phased reduction 33.3% → 25%. D.3.1 category: centrist-coalition market-oriented content. Outcome: pre-COVID unemployment fall, investment uptick; contested distributional effects (gilets jaunes protests 2018).

Policy-content fingerprint — what this policy moved, on which axes

Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.

intended
↑
labour market flexibility
regulatory.labour_market_flexibility
Ease of hiring/firing, collective-bargaining scope, minimum wage rigidity, temporary/permanent contract regulation.
increased · moderate
more flexible (easier hiring/firing, less rigid bargaining)
↓
tax progressivity
fiscal.tax_progressivity
Progressivity of the personal income tax schedule, including top marginal rates, bracket spread, and targeted credits (EITC-equivalents).
decreased · moderate
less progressive (flatter rates, compression, smaller credits)
PFU flat rate; ISF abolition for financial wealth.
↓
tax capital
fiscal.tax_capital
Taxation of capital income (dividends, capital gains, inheritance, wealth). Distinct from corporate rate.
decreased · moderate
lower capital income tax
↓
tax corporate
fiscal.tax_corporate
Statutory and effective corporate tax rates, treatment of depreciation, and international competitiveness.
decreased · moderate
lower corporate tax burden

Enacted by

Empirical evidence — linked hypotheses

Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".

Countries with stricter employment protection legislation — measured by the OECD EPL indicator (or comparable alternatives where OECD EPL is missing) — experience longer average unemployment duration, holding other controls constant.
labour_market_flexibility_unemployment_durationinferred
viaregulatory.labour_market_flexibility
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — interaction term requested but no loadable constructed interaction variable is defined. The generic panel_fe runner would otherwise …
run pending
In a broad-country panel 1990-2019, greater labour-market flexibility — measured by lower OECD EPL overall strictness, higher ease-of-hiring scores, and absence of centralized wage bargaining — predicts higher employment-to- population ratios and faster real GDP per capita growth, controlling for institutional quality, education, and trade openness.
labour_market_flexibility_employment_growth_panelinferred
viaregulatory.labour_market_flexibility
PARTIAL — coef=-1.251, p=0.162 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive
partial
Labour-market flexibility (ease of hiring and firing, low EPL, decentralised wage bargaining) improves long-run employment rates, productivity growth, and GDP per capita only when paired with complementary adjustment institutions: active labour-market policy (retraining, job search assistance), relocation support, or income-smoothing mechanisms (unemployment insurance, portable benefits).
labour_flexibility_security_complementinferred
viaregulatory.labour_market_flexibilityfiscal.tax_capital
PARTIAL — coef=+1.306e-16, p=0.339; effect magnitude effectively zero
partial
Germany's Agenda 2010 labour-market reforms worked within the Ordoliberal framework precisely because they preserved collective-bargaining institutions and vocational-training architecture; the same reforms imposed on UK-style labour markets produced larger inequality increases.
labour_market_reform_institutional_complementarityinferred
viaregulatory.labour_market_flexibility
PARTIAL — coef=-7.366e+04, p=0.927 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive
partial
Strong employment-protection legislation (EPL) with high union wage-setting coverage and limited at-will dismissal produces a three-order causal chain in Southern European labour markets.
strong_union_labour_law_youth_unemployment_south_europeinferred
viaregulatory.labour_market_flexibility
PARTIAL — coef=+2.943, p=0.252 (above α=0.05); direction inconclusive
partial
Wealth taxes produce a three-order causal chain.
wealth_tax_capital_flight_revenue_yield_gapinferred
viafiscal.tax_capitalfiscal.tax_progressivityfiscal.tax_corporate
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — FRA not in panel
run pending
At high-income levels (GDP per capita above OECD median), very high tax burdens — defined as total tax revenue above 40% of GDP — predict weaker long-run total factor productivity growth unless paired with unusually high state capacity (top tercile WGI Government Effectiveness) and high labour- market flexibility (top tercile OECD EPL), in an OECD and high-income panel 1980-2020.
tax_burden_frontier_growth_non_linearinferred
viaregulatory.labour_market_flexibilityfiscal.tax_progressivity
PARTIAL — coef=+0.01059, p=0.585 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive
partial
Labour-market flexibilisation reforms improve unemployment outcomes in countries with strong active-labour-market-policy (ALMP) complementarities (Denmark flexicurity post-1994, Germany Agenda 2010 / Hartz I-IV 2003-2005) but produce inequality increases without commensurate employment gains in countries lacking institutional ALMP infrastructure.
labour_market_reform_almp_complementarity_effectinferred
viaregulatory.labour_market_flexibilityfiscal.tax_progressivity
SUPPORTED — coef=-5.815 (sign matches claim -), p=8.21e-05
supported

Similar historical policies

Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.

19 percent flat tax (PIT/CIT/VAT) 2004
SVK·2004
match
2.4
tax progressivitytax corporatetax capital
Swedish 'Tax Reform of the Century' 1990-1991
SWE·1990
match
2.3
tax progressivitytax corporatetax capital
Economic Recovery Tax Act 1981 + Tax Reform Act 1986
USA·1981
match
2.3
tax progressivitytax corporatetax capital
France Corporate Tax Reduction 2018 2022
FRA·2017
match
2.2
labour market flexibilitytax progressivitytax capitaltax corporate
France Isf Ifi Swap 2017
FRA·2017
match
2.2
labour market flexibilitytax progressivitytax capitaltax corporate
France Ordonnances Travail 2017
FRA·2017
match
2.2
labour market flexibilitytax progressivitytax capitaltax corporate
France Pfu 2018
FRA·2017
match
2.2
labour market flexibilitytax progressivitytax capitaltax corporate
Norwegian 1992 tax reform — base broadening and dual-income
NOR·1992
match
2.1
tax corporatetax progressivitytax capital

References

Notes

Migrated from movements/macron_labour_tax_reforms_2017_2019.yaml (action=MERGE). This entity is a single policy/legislation, not a coalition era; reclassified to policies/. Original movement file deleted.