Addressing the issue of undeclared work – Part I: Applying associative classification per the CRISP-DM methodology

Addressing undeclared work is a high priority in the labor field for government policymakers since it adversely affects all involved parties and results in significant losses in tax and social security contribution revenues. In the last years, the wide use of ICT in labor inspectorates and the considerable progress in data exchange have resulted in numerous databases dispersed in various units, yet these are not effectively used to increase their functions productivity. This study presents a detailed analysis of a data mining project per the CRISP-DM methodology aiming to assist the labor inspectorates in dealing with undeclared work and other labor law violations. It uses real past inspections data merged with companies characteristics and their employment details and examines the application of two Associative Classification algorithms, the CBA and CBA2, in combination with two types of datasets, a binary and a four-class. The produced models are assessed per the data mining goals and per the initial business objectives, and the research concludes proposing an innovative inspections recommendation tool proved to offer two major benefits: a mechanism for planning targeted inspections of improved efficiency and a knowledge repository for enhancing the inspectors understanding of those features linked with labor law violations.

Social Security Contribution Rate and Its Impacts on Labor Demand of Enterprises in Carbon Neutral Context

With the government setting stricter standard on carbon emission, enterprises are facing more environmental pressure and cost these years. At the same time, China’s State Council has officially announced a further reducing the social security contribution rate from May 1, 2019, it is worthy of assessing that if the reduction would decompress enterprises and promote labor demand. Our results shows that social security contribution rate does not have significantly impacts on enterprises’ labor demand overall. However, when wage and benefit are controlled, it has a direct impact on labor demand. Basic regression and heterogeneity analysis both confirm it. Wage and benefit play intermediary roles as the results show. Social security contribution rate has negatively impact on wage and benefit, which help to keep the total labor remuneration and then labor demand unchanged. State-owned and private enterprises show similar results. However, laborintensive and non-labor-intensive enterprises show slightly different results.

Anatomy of social security contribution evasion in Italy

This work presents an estimate of social security contribution evasion (SSCE) for different job categories and job sectors in Italy, among 1995 and 2016. The evasion is computed as share of the work-force that did not pay social security contribution, not as monetary evasion. The author finds a stationary trend in the size of the SSCE over time, and some significative differences in the different sectors and in the different Italian regions. The average SSCE for Italy in the 1995-2016 period is 0.149, an evasion of around 15 percent of the workforce in the social security contributions of a representative sample of Italian population, calculated on over 26,000 observations. SSCE is a well-known issue all around the world. It is a highly sensitive topic, and it is been suggested that given the aging of the population and the increasing flexibility of the work, its importance is going to increase. It is particularly interesting in a country such as Italy, where there is a huge underground economy that affects the country. Even though economists have studied the determinant and the effect of tax evasion (Allingham and Sandmo, 1972) since half a century, very few works have specifically focused on the implication of contribution evasion for social security schemes (Bailey, 2001; McGillivray, 2002) and on the determinants of contribution evasion (Bailey, 1997), especially with a quantitative approach. This work aims to contribute to the literature on SSCE, which has his own specificities that makes it different from tax evasion, offering a series of descriptive statistics on SSCE in Italy in the last twenty years. The two main goals of this study are to estimate SSCE in Italy for the different job categories, in different work sectors and in all the Italian regions between 1995 and 2016 and to provide some insights about the main causes of SSCE. In a nutshell, the findings of the author show that the highest SSCE is among self-employed and temporary worker active in the household services, building and agriculture sectors. Instead for the geographical distribution concerns, Southern Italian regions register a higher SSCE than Centre and North of Italy. The trend over the period 1998-2016 of SSC evasion is pretty much stable, while there is a gap with the 1995 estimate.

SOCIAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTION INDEBTED FIRMS IN VIETNAM: CHARACTERISTICS AND MARKET VALUE

This research is the first to empirically analyse the characteristics of firms that defer the social security contribution for their employees to the Vietnam Social Security agency, which is a chargeable offense starting 2018 as the Vietnam government focuses on ensuring worker welfare. Using data on 873 public firms headquartered in four major cities (Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh, Da Nang, and Hai Phong), we find that non-state-owned firms and firms with lower profitability and higher debts are more likely to be in arrears on social security contribution. On the other hand, the roles of foreign ownership, size, number of employees, and number of branches/offices are insignificant. We further show that being social security contribution indebted would negatively affect shareholders’ interest as it is associated with lower firm market values.Key words: social security contribution, worker welfare, state ownership, foreign ownership, firm market value

Wage Cost-Reducing Policies and Employment Stability for People With Disabilities in the Spanish Labor Market

The strategies for integrating people with disabilities into the labor market have evolved toward a social approach, in which the objective is the integration with stable and decent jobs. This article analyzes how persons with disabilities enter the ordinary labor market by studying the factors that strengthen stability in that process. In particular, it analyzes the incentives to hire workers by means of Social Security contribution deductions, a wage cost-reducing measure, and studies whether or not reduced contributions affects the hiring of people with disabilities in stable positions, thus promoting the possibility of decent and stable jobs. We focus on people with disabilities entering the job market for the first time during the period 2004 to 2011, using the Continuous Sample of Working Histories Database for Spain and using as a control group people without disabilities. The results obtained show that reduced social security contributions constitute an incentive that effectively encourages the entry of workers with a disability into the labor market by means of stable employment.

Tax or social security contribution, a world of difference?

Cross-border employees and self-employed workers are confronted with the regulations of at least two states when it comes to taxation and social security. Without delving into the specifics of national regulations, this article examines the applicable rules concerning the levy of taxes and social security contributions in the context of cross-border employment. Regulations aimed at avoiding double taxation are different from those aimed at avoiding the double payment of social security contributions. Because social security in the Member States can be financed in different ways, the levying of so-called economic double taxation is possible. This is true in particular where states use a large part of the tax revenues to finance their social security system. Cross-border workers that are required to pay taxes in these states and also pay social security contributions in another state can feel that they are paying double social security contributions. This contributes to a sense of injustice and is undesirable. The conclusion is that possible double economic contributions must be studied in a broader European context. First, the problem must be identified and then solutions formulated in order to prevent double levying.

Igualdad y conciliación de la vida familiar y la actividad profesional de los trabajadores y trabajadoras autónomas: avances normativos y cuestiones pendientes

<p><strong>Resumen</strong> El presente trabajo versa sobre las últimas medidas legislativas introducidas a fin de garantizar los derechos a la maternidad y a la conciliación de la vida familiar y la actividad profesional de las trabajadoras autónomas, desde las perspectivas del principio de igualdad y de la promoción del autoempleo femenino. A tal fin, se estudian las escasas referencias a la conciliación en materia de jornada contenidas en la LETA. Especial atención merecen las bonificaciones en la cotización relacionadas con el ejercicio de sus derechos en materia de maternidad y conciliación, reguladas en los arts. 30, 38 y 38 <em>bis</em> LETA. Asimismo, se trata sobre la posibilidad de contratación de personas asalariadas por los TRADE, introducida en el art. 11.2.a) ET. Finalmente, se analizan las garantías previstas en el art. 15 LETA frente a la facultad de la empresa cliente de resolver el contrato con el TRADE, aspecto este último en el que se observa un claro paralelismo con el régimen aplicable al trabajo por cuenta ajena, a la vez que ciertas carencias que pueden ser consideradas contrarias a la Constitución Española. Todo ello, a la luz de las novedades introducidas por la Ley 6/2017, de Reformas Urgentes del Trabajo Autónomo.</p><p><strong>Abstract</strong> This paper studies the various mechanisms that the last legislative reforms have introduced in order to guarantee the right to motherhood and the reconciliation of family life and professional activity of self-employed women, both from the point of view of the principle of equality and from the perspective of the promotion of entrepreneurship and female self-employment. To this end, the paper reviews the few references to the conciliation in terms of working hours found in the LETA. Special attention deserve the Social Security contribution bonuses applicable to the hiring of employed persons by self-employed women to enable them to exercise their maternity and reconciliation rights, according to arts. 30, 38 and 38 <em>bis</em> LETA. Likewise, it deals with the possibility of hiring salaried persons by economically dependent workers, provided by. 11.2.a) ET. Finally, the guarantees introduced in art. 15 LETA as to the faculty of the client to resolve the contract with economically dependent workers, are analyzed, concluding the existence of a clear parallelism with the regime applicable to employment contract, while certain shortcomings that could be considered contrary to the Spanish Constitution. All this, in light of the reforms introduced by Act 6/2017, on Urgent Reforms of Autonomous Work.</p><p><strong>Key words </strong>Self-employed women motherhood, reconciliation of family life and the professional activity, Social Security contribution bonuses, female entrepreneurship, economically dependent workers<strong></strong></p>