摘要：The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has received considerable attention as a possible model for European policy-making. While most contributions focus on the primary effects of an EITC on employment and the well-being of the “working poor”, we know of no study that points at some market failure that an EITC might correct, thereby providing a traditional welfare-economic rationale for the plan. We introduce two such arguments: First, if future productivity and, therefore, wages are risky, an EITC might bring about a (second order) statistically dominant distribution of net wages, which makes risk-averse workers better off and may – in the presence of a minimum income guarantee and sunk costs of entering the labour market – even be necessary to make them take up work at all. Second, employers are typically unable to recoup an investment in their employee’s general human capital by reducing wages, as employees can always find work elsewhere that pays the full marginal product. If some capital market imperfections prevent low-skilled employees from financing human capital investment themselves and an outside option – such as social security payments – makes the low-skilled refuse employment at an initially very low (“apprenticeship”) wage rate, an EITC can enhance welfare by reducing employers’ wage cost for untrained entrants, while forcing trained employees to finance this initial rebate.
