Supply-Side Economics of Germany's Year 2000 Tax Reform: A Quantitative Assessment

Abstract. The paper provides an assessment of supply‐side economics following Germany's year 2000 tax reform. Investigated are a corporate tax cut, deteriorating depreciation allowances and imputation rules, and a private income tax cut. For this purpose, a neoclassical growth model is augmented by various fiscal policy parameters and endogenous corporate finance and calibrated with German data. The model is used to evaluate consequences of Germany's tax reform on production, firm finance and leverage, investment, consumption and welfare of a representative household.     

Public debt in a basic endogenous growth model

We work out the mechanism that makes public debt affect the allocation of resources in the long-run. To do so we analyze an AK growth model with elastic labor supply and a government sector. The government levies a distortionary income tax and issues bonds to finance lump-sum transfers and non-distortionary public spending. We show that the long-run growth rate is the smaller the higher the debt ratio if the government adjusts public spending to fulfill its inter-temporal budget constraint. If the government adjusts lump-sum transfers the public debt ratio does not affect the balanced growth rate.     

FIRST‐BEST FISCAL POLICY WITH SOCIAL STATUS*

This paper examines the first‐best fiscal policy in a stochastic, infinite‐horizon representative agent model that exhibits consumption‐enhanced as well as wealth‐enhanced social status in the household utility. We show that the first‐best labour tax rate is a positive constant that is used to correct negative consumption externalities. The first‐best tax rate on capital income is also positive in order to overturn agents' status‐seeking capital over‐accumulation. Moreover, we find that in sharp contrast to a conventional automatic stabilizer, the first‐best capital tax rate moves in the opposite direction with shocks to firms' production technology, thus exacerbating the business cycle.     

Automatic stabilizers, fiscal rules and macroeconomic stability

This paper analyzes the effect of the fiscal structure upon the trade-off between inflation and output stabilization induced by technological shocks in a DGE model with nominal and real rigidities that also integrates a rich menu of fiscal variables as well as a target on the debt to output ratio. The channels through which fiscal policy affects macroeconomic stability include supply-side effects of distortionary taxes, the procyclical behavior of public spending induced by fiscal rules and the conventional effect of automatic stabilizers operating through disposable (permanent) income. The paper investigates these channels and concludes that, contrary to what has been found in RBC models, distortionary taxes tend to reduce output volatility relative to lump-sum taxes when significant rigidities are present. We also study the stabilization effect of alternative (distortionary) tax structures and find that these are only relevant if substantial rigidities are present.     

Informational externalities,strategic delay,and optimal investment subsidies

Abstract This paper examines optimal government policy when private investment generates information, but investors cannot internalize the informational value their actions have to others. Equilibrium exhibits inefficient delay, as investors adopt a wait‐and‐see approach. The government can alter incentives via an investment subsidy, but complications arise, since future subsidies may induce investors to disregard current policy initiatives. The paper shows that the government achieves its desired outcome only when the the investment subsidy is financed by a non‐distortionary, lump‐sum tax. When taxation is distortionary, the government faces a time inconsistency problem that may prevent effective policy.     

Optimal taxation with endogenously incomplete debt markets

Empirical analyses of labor tax and public debt processes provide prima facie evidence for imperfect government insurance. This paper considers a model in which the government's inability to commit to future policies or to report truthfully its spending needs renders government debt markets endogenously incomplete. A method for solving for optimal fiscal policy under these constraints is developed. Such policy is found to be intermediate between that implied by the complete insurance (Ramsey) model and a model with exogenously incomplete debt markets. In contrast to optimal Ramsey policy, optimal policy in this model is consistent with a variety of stylized fiscal policy facts such as the high persistence of labor tax rates and debt levels and the positive covariance between government spending and the value of government debt sales.     

Optimal fiscal policy in a model with inherited aspirations and habit formation

In this paper, we analyze optimal fiscal policies in an overlapping generations framework, where preferences exhibit aspirations in consumption and environmental quality as well as habit formation. We focus on the second best policies when the government needs to finance a given stream of public expenditures by using distortionary taxes. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which the competitive equilibrium is characterized by levels of capital and environmental quality that are too small and a level of labor supply that is too large. Our numerical simulations show that an optimal fiscal policy can be used as an effective stabilization device and that when consumption taxes are fixed, the planner implements maintenance investment and capital income subsidies while financing public spending through labor and fixed consumption taxes.     

Tax Base and Crowding‐in Effects of Balanced Budget Fiscal Policy

A dynamic general equilibrium business cycle model is constructed with staggered price adjustment, monopolistic wage setting and distortionary taxation. The government purchases goods, runs an unemployment benefit system and balances its budget through a proportional tax on labour income. A temporary tax‐financed increase in government expenditures can lower the tax rate through a demand‐induced widening of the tax base. It is shown analytically that this allows private consumption to rise, under realistic conditions, despite the negative wealth effect of increased fiscal spending.     

Strategies for Fiscal Reform in the Context of the EMU: the Case of Portugal

The authors use an endogenous growth dynamic general‐equilibrium model, which accommodates the institutional constraints of the Stability and Growth Pact, to study tax reform in Portugal. Simulation results suggest that tax cuts financed in a nondistortionary way increase long‐term GDP; i.e., they are efficiency improving, but do not always increase welfare. The tradeoff between efficiency and welfare is alleviated when reductions in public spending or increased public indebtedness finance the tax cuts. Since these mechanisms are not realistic under the institutional setting of the Stability and Growth Pact, tax reform in Portugal must involve trading off distortionary tax margins. In this case, the best strategy to increase both efficiency and welfare is to increase investment tax credits and finance them either through personal income taxes or through employers’ social security contributions.     

Fiscal Policy and Equitable Growth

This paper continues the study of optimal fiscal policy in a growing economy by exploring a case in which the government simultaneously provides three main categories of expenditures with distortionary tax finance: public production services, public consumption services, and state-contingent redistributive transfers. The paper shows that in a general-equilibrium model with given exogenous fiscal policy, a nonmonotonic relation exists between the suboptimal long-run growth rate in a competitive economy and distortionary tax rates. When fiscal policy is endogenously chosen at a social optimum, the relation between the rate of growth and tax rates is always negative. These two properties suggest that an alternative set of government policy instruments affects the response of private sector investment to fiscal policy. Moreover, the different properties of exogenous and endogenous fiscal policy theoretically account for the difference in the relation between economic growth and fiscal policy in empirical studies.     

Income and substitution effects of fiscal policy on work effort

The focus of this paper is twofold. First, it examines the impact on work effort of changes in government purchases financed with lump‐sum taxes, in a neoclassical framework, with respect to four industrialised countries. Second, it reconsiders the expenditure–work effort relationship in a broader conceptual context that allows for distortionary taxation and a disaggregation of the income and substitution effects. Our findings are shown to cast doubt on the empirical plausibility of the prevailing (neoclassical and New Keynesian) models which seem to rely heavily on the lump‐sum tax notion, thus ignoring the substitution effects of distortionary taxation.     

Public budget composition,fiscal (de)centralization,and welfare

Abstract We study the optimal degree of fiscal decentralization in a dynamic federal economy where governments decide on budget size and its allocation between public education and infrastructure spending. We find that full centralization of tax and expenditure policies is optimal when infrastructure productivity is similar across regions. When differences are not too large, partial centralization is optimal. With strong differences, full decentralization becomes optimal. National steady‐state output tends to be highest under full decentralization. We provide a justification for the mixed evidence regarding the Oates conjecture by showing that full dominates partial decentralization, despite being inferior to complete decentralization.     

Tax incentives in fiscal federalism: an integrated perspective

Abstract Models of fiscal federalism rarely account for the efficiency implications of intergovernmental fiscal ties for federal tax policy. This paper shows that fiscal institutions such that federal tax deductibility, vertical revenue‐sharing, and fiscal equalization (being common features of existing federations) encourage local taxation, but may discourage federal taxation. Furthermore, the structure of public spending is skewed towards local spending. We also show that, when considering Leviathan governments, fiscal institutions reduce confiscatory taxation by the federal government. The result is contrary to the Cartelization Hypothesis ( Brennan and Buchanan 1980 ). Finally, we characterize the efficient design of intergovernmental fiscal ties.     

Conspicuous Leisure: Optimal Income Taxation When Both Relative Consumption and Relative Leisure Matter*

In previous studies on public policy under relative‐consumption concerns, leisure comparisons have been ignored. In this paper, we consider a two‐type optimal non‐linear income tax model, in which people care about both their relative consumption and their relative leisure. Increased consumption positionality typically implies higher marginal income tax rates for both ability types, whereas leisure positionality has an offsetting role. However, this offsetting role is not symmetric; concern about relative leisure implies a progressive income tax component (i.e., a component that is larger for the high‐ability type than for the low‐ability type). Leisure positionality does not modify the policy rule for public‐good provision.     

The growth effects of tax rates in the OECD

This paper explores the merits of macro‐ and micro‐based tax rate measures within an open economy “fiscal policy and growth” model. Using annual data for 15 OECD countries we find statistically small, non‐robust long‐run growth effects of macro‐based average tax rates on capital income and consumption, but some evidence for average labour income tax effects. Changes in “micro” marginal income tax rates at both the personal and corporate levels yield statistically robust GDP responses of modest size. Both domestic and foreign corporate taxes appear relevant. In general, tax effects on GDP operate largely via factor productivity rather than factor accumulation.     

Redistribution and the marginal cost of public funds

Discussions of the marginal cost of public funds with distortionary taxation are often cast in the framework of a one-consumer economy, while the main justification of distortionary taxes is that they are needed for redistribution. This paper analyzes the issue in a model with heterogeneous consumers and a linear income tax, focusing on the tradeoff between labour market distortions and the redistribution from high-wage to low-wage workers. In an optimal tax system the MCF will be the same for all sources of funds and under certain assumptions less than one. Without optimality the MCF will in general differ between different sources of finance.     

Should the Carbon Price Be the Same in All Countries?

International differences in fuel taxation are huge, and may be justified by different local negative externalities that taxes must correct, as well as by different preferences for public spending. In this context, should a worldwide uniform carbon tax be added to these local taxes to correct the global warming externality? We address this question in a second best framework à la Ramsey, where public goods have to be financed through distortionary taxation and the cost of public funds has to be weighted against the utility of public goods. We show that when lump‐sum transfers between countries are allowed for, the second best tax on the polluting good may be decomposed into three parts: one, country‐specific, dealing with the local negative externality, a second one, country‐specific, dealing with the cost of levying public funds, and a third one, global, dealing with the global externality and which can be interpreted as the carbon price. Our main contribution is to show that the uniformity of the carbon price should still hold in this second best framework. Nevertheless, if lump‐sum transfers between governments are impossible to implement, international differentiation of the carbon price is the only way to take care of equity concerns.     

MONETARY EXPANSION AND PRODUCTIVE PUBLIC EXPENDITURE IN A CASH‐IN‐ADVANCE ECONOMY*

Using a dynamic optimization model that incorporates a cash‐in‐advance constraint on both consumption and investment and productive public capital financed by a lump‐sum tax and seigniorage, this paper analyses the steady‐state effects of an increase in the inflation rate (the money growth rate) on output, private capital and welfare. The effects are negative at high inflation rates. However, at low inflation rates, the effects depend on the amount of lump‐sum tax revenue collected and therefore are either positive or negative.     

Public policy,dynamic status preferences,and wealth inequality

This paper studies the effect of productive government spending (taxation) on aggregate savings behavior and its consequences for the dynamics of wealth inequality, taking into consideration key behavioral changes that occur during the process of economic development. Substantial empirical evidence suggests that during this process agents' preferences toward status (positional consumption) evolves according to the average wealth of the society. The sources of wealth include private capital and productive public capital, the latter financed by a distortionary income tax. This dynamic status effect impacts peoples' responses to tax policy in ways which contrast with those of the standard neoclassical model. Specifically, we find that in response to an increase in the income tax, in economies with a strong (weak) enough dynamic status effect, savings and inequality increase (decrease). Incorporating the behavioral changes to fiscal policy expands the set of mechanisms available to explain the observed variations of savings and wealth distribution dynamics that cannot be attributed to technological or other structural factors.     

The general equilibrium effects of fiscal policy: Estimates for the Euro area

This paper describes a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model featuring a fraction of non-Ricardian agents in order to estimate the effects of fiscal policy in the Euro area. The model takes into account distortionary taxation on labor and capital income and on consumption, while expenditures are broken down into purchases of goods and services, compensation of public employees and transfers to households. A newly computed quarterly data set of fiscal variables is used. Our results point to the prevalence of mild Keynesian effects of public expenditures. In particular, although innovations in fiscal policy variables tend to be rather persistent, government purchases of goods and services and compensations for public employees have small and short-lived expansionary effects on private consumption, while innovations in transfers to households show a slightly more sizeable and lasting effect. The effects are more significant on the revenue side: decreases in labor income and consumption tax rates have sizeable effects on consumption and output, while a reduction in capital income tax favors investment and output in the medium run. Finally our estimates suggest that fiscal policy variables contribute little to the cyclical variability of the main macro variables.