Trickle-Down Economics: Does Anyone Actually Believe In It?

Link: http://neighborhoodeffects.mercatus.org/2012/06/01/trickle-down-economics-does-anyone-actually-believe-in-it/ 

The words “trickle down” imply that if youredistribute money to the wealthy, they will spend it (say, by hiring workers or by buying products) and it will somehow find its way into the hands of the poor. To the extent that any economists endorse such a notion, they are emphatically not free market economists.This is not to say that there is no case for low taxation. There is a strong theoretical case for low taxation (so long as it is accompanied by low spending!). And it is backed by good empirical evidence.
But the case for low taxation is not—as the phrase “trickle down” implies—based on the idea that we should give money to a wealthy person so she can spend it. Instead, it is based on the idea that if we take money away from either a rich or a poor person when they engage in some activity, they will tend to engage in less of that activity.If we tax work, people will tend to work less. If we tax consumption, people will tend to consume less. If we tax saving, people will tend to save less. The idea is rooted in basic microeconomics. Taxing labor, for example, makes leisure less expensive. So people choose more leisure. This is called the substitution effect.*
All this theory is well and good, but is there any evidence to back it up? Yes. Michael Keane offers a nice survey of labor supply and taxation studies in the December issue of the Journal of Economic Literature. He identifies at least two major patterns in the evidence:

1. Women are more responsive to taxes than men (most economists think men are relatively unresponsive to labor taxes, especially in the short run).

1. People—particularly women—are more responsive to taxes when they consider whether to work than they are when they consider how much to work. In the average study, the long-run elasticity for female labor is 3.6. This means that if a tax hike reduces after tax wages by 10 percent, female labor force participation tends to fall by about 36 percent. As Keane puts it, this is a “very large” effect.