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This paper provides a quantitative evaluation of the macroeconomic, distributional, and fiscal effects of three reform proposals for Germany: i) a reduction in the social security tax in the low-wage sector, ii) a publicly financed expansion of full-day child care and full-day schooling, and iii) the further deregulation of the professional services sector. The analysis is based on a macroeconomic model with physical capital, human capital, job search, and household heterogeneity. All three reforms have positive short-run and long-run effects on employment, wages, and output. The quantitative effects of the deregulation reform are relatively small due to the small size of professional services in Germany. Policy reforms i) and ii) have substantial macroeconomic effects and positive distributional consequences. Ten years after implementation, reforms i) and ii) taken together increase employment by 1.6 percent, potential output by 1.5 percent, real hourly pre-tax wages in the low-wage sector by 3 percent, and real hourly pre-tax wages of women with children by 2.7 percent. The two reforms create fiscal deficits in the short run, but they also generate substantial fiscal surpluses in the long-run. They are fiscally efficient in the sense that the present value of short-term fiscal deficits and long-term surpluses is positive for any interest (discount) rate less than 9 percent--Abstract

Indicators of government activity must be carefully designed to be relevant, credible and accountable. Frustration with reform pressures suggests that measures of policy activity are not providing accurate information. In fact, indicators of product or labour market regulation fail to measure structural reform as they focus on cross-country comparisons rather than on progress with reform over time. I use the novel EU Semester approach recommending EU Member States to implement reforms and their annual follow-up in the National Reform Programme to develop some indicators of how reform plans are actually implemented. This indicator might be useful for checking progress with policy, but also for empirical studies testing what drives or blocks reform in different policy domains.

Economists recommend to partly redistribute gains to losers from a structural reform, which in many cases may be required for making the reform politically viable. However, taxation is distortionary. Then, it is unclear that compensatory transfers can support a Pareto-improving reform. This paper provides sufficient conditions for this to occur, despite tax distortions. I consider an economy where workers have sector-specific skills and some sectors are regulated by a price floor. Transfers have to be financed by proportional taxation on firm's revenues or, equivalently, labor income. Labor supply is elastic to net post-tax real wages, and hence reduced by taxation. In a setting where preferences are isoelastic, deregulation is implementable in a Pareto- improving way through compensatory lump-sum transfers, despite that these are financed by distortionary taxes. In a more general setting, there always exist Pareto-improving reforms but they may involved tightening regulation for some goods. I provide sufficient conditions for deregulation, i.e. a general reduction in price floors, to be Pareto-improving. They imply that demand cross-price elasticities should not be too large and that the reform should not be too unbalanced. Finally, I consider counter-examples where some people earn rents associated with informational or institutional frictions. In such situations, Pareto improvements are unlikely. If losers have veto power, the reform may only be supported by a minority of people. Broadening reform scope is especially useful to raise its political support when its impact is uneven across consumers.

Economists recommend to partly redistribute gains to losers from a structural reform, which in many cases may be required for making the reform politically viable. However, taxation is distortionary. Then, it is unclear that compensatory transfers can support a Pareto-improving reform. This paper provides sufficient conditions for this to occur, despite tax distortions. I consider an economy where workers have sector-specific skills and some sectors are regulated by a price .floor. Transfers have to be financed by proportional taxation on firm's revenues or, equivalently, labor income. Labor supply is elastic to net post-tax real wages, and hence reduced by taxation. In a setting where preferences are isoelastic, deregulation is implementable in a Pareto-improving way through compensatory lump-sum transfers, despite that these are financed by distortionary taxes. In a more general setting, there always exist Pareto-improving reforms but they may involved tightening regulation for some goods. I provide sufficient conditions for deregulation, i.e. a general reduction in price floors, to be Pareto-improving. They imply that demand cross-price elasticities should not be too large and that the reform should not be too unbalanced. Finally, I consider counter-examples where some people earn rents associated with informational or institutional frictions. In such situations, Pareto improvements are unlikely. If losers have veto power, the reform may only be supported by a minority of people. Broadening reform scope is especially useful to raise its political support when its impact is uneven across consumers.

Policymakers are faced with a crucial choice between ameliorating the symptoms of existing economic problems and trying to address the causes of these problems. The latter goal is what explains the emergence and growing popularity of a relatively new idea: structural reform. What are structural reforms and what challenges do they face? We must start by understanding what the idea implies. First, it calls for a new approach, a general vision of the economy as an integrated system, where policy complementarities abound. Second, it expresses a certain understanding of the relationship between state and market, whereby the state has a foundational or institutional role but does not interfere with economic activity and economic agents. Third, structural reform is in many respects at odds with elements of our political systems, which face increasing challenges when fundamental economic change becomes necessary.

Cover -- Contents -- Abstract -- I. Introduction -- II. Stylized Facts on Structural reforms in the Caribbean -- A. Trade Reforms -- B. Financial Liberalization -- C. Tax Reforms -- D. Privatization -- III. Literature Review -- IV. Measuring the Impact of reforms: Methodology and Indices -- A. Trade reform -- B. International financial liberalization -- C. Tax Reform -- V. Model Specification, Methodology and Results -- VI. Other Consideration: Institutional Quality -- VII. Conclusion -- References