Fiscal impact of privatization revisited: The role of tax revenues in transition economies

In contrast to earlier literature, this paper finds empirical evidence that privatization has deteriorated fiscal balances in transition economies. The investigation focuses on the role of tax revenues in explaining the fiscal impact of privatization, as it appears that tax revenue in many transition countries remained lackluster even after the adoption of several tax reforms in the last two decades, and no formal econometric assessment has been conducted of the extent to which privatization has affected tax revenues. Using panel data for 29 Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries, the analysis finds robust signs of a strong negative impact of privatization on different tax revenue sources. The paper also provides some empirical evidence favoring the early adoption of value-added taxes that appear to have contributed to government revenue recovery.     

“营改增”对地方财政收支负面影响思考

营业税改征增值税的税制改革一直是中国近年来财税体制改革领域的热点问题,其涉及改革范围、政府间财政关系的调整等诸多方面,堪称中国“十二五”时期财税体制改革的“牛鼻子”。文章以上海市为例就“营改增”税制改革从系统循环角度出发,分析此次改革对上海市地方财政收入规模结构的影响,从而对其地方财政支出规模结构的影响,最终影响到其地方经济的发展,并在这个基础上又对其地方财政收入开始新的一轮的循环影响。由于“营改增”税制改革现已在全国范围内开展,为顺利推进此次改革．保持其地方政府财力不变．文章也提出了一些改革的相应配套措施．     

我国财政政策对产业结构优化的时变效应

研究目标：财政政策对产业结构优化的时变性影响。研究方法：构建带有随机波动率的时变参数因子扩展向量自回归模型,进而通过三维脉冲响应展开时变性分析。研究发现：财政政策对产业结构优化确实产生了时变效应,在经济衰退时期,应该增加财政支出、提高投资性支出占比,结合小幅度减税、提高营业税和消费税占比;在经济平稳时期,应该减少税收、提高营业税占比、降低增值税占比,结合小幅度增加财政支出、提高投资性支出占比、降低一般公共服务支出占比;在经济高涨时期,应该增加财政支出、提高科技支出和投资性支出占比,结合小幅度减税、提高所得税占比、降低营业税占比。研究创新：应用时变参数计量模型研究了财政政策对产业结构优化的时变效应。研究价值：有助于重新认识财政政策与产业结构优化的关系。     

浅谈银行如何有效防范地方政府融资风险

在94年国家进行分税制改革之后,财政收入向中央政府集中,这加剧了各地方政府事权与财权不平衡的局面,政府融资平台为地方政府拓宽了融资渠道。进入2008以来,受国际金融危机的影响,我国实施了宽松的货币政策和积极的财政政策,推动了各地方政府融资平台飞速发展,在应对金融危机方面起到了重要作用。但是地方政府融资债务疯狂增长下其隐藏的风险已经逐渐凸显出来,值得我们关注。本文从银行的角度浅析了银行如何防范来自地方政府融资的风险。     

Urbanisation,fiscal decentralisation and economic development: A time series evidence

Several empirical tests using Multiple Regression Analyses were conducted on several hypotheses using time series data obtained from the federal and state governments. The results of our analyses establish that the degree of fiscal decentralisation is dependent on intergovernmental transfers and states income per capita. However intergovernmental transfers were not dependent on expenditure decentralisationper se. The degree of urbanisation was found to be inversely related to fiscal decentralisation. The variable measuring the degree of openess was found not statistically significant as an explanatory variable for fiscal decentralisation. However, the share of agriculture was found significant in revenue decentralisation but loses its importance in expenditure decentralisation.The policy implications of the study are that: (i) There is need for the states to develop plans to increase their per capita income, improve their tax collection system, introduce new tax bases and reduce the high degree of free ridership in public goods and services exhibited by the urban population. (ii) The Federal Government should provide specific grants to state governments for urban development, because of the high per capita cost of public goods and services. (iii) The existing Revenue Allocation Act should be reviewed to reflect state government efforts in generating their own revenue from internal sources.     

加快中小企业发展的财税政策探析

在后危机时代,中小企业的发展面临着严峻的挑战,技术水平差、产品层次低、管理水平落后等内在劣势以及外在政策上的变相岐视,严重影响着中小企业的生存和发展。要想使中小企业走出困境,则政府加大财税支持力度刻不容缓。本文认为,政府应在加大财政补贴投入力度,优化支出结构,完善面向中小企业的政府采购制度,创新投融资制度等方面,加强对中小企业的财税政策支持。     

分税制体制下我国财政审计创新研究

财税制体系的完善,需要财政审计监督机制的保驾护航。为保障分税制的顺利实施,应积极探索财政审计创新,采取加强预算管理审计、加强财政转移支付审计、加强财政专项审计和审计调查、推行财政收支绩效审计等创新措施。     

Government Size,the Role of Commitments*

We explore the hypothesis that long‐term commitments affect the dynamics of government expenditure. With the aid of a simple median‐voter model we interpret the pattern of increasing‐then‐constant tax rates observed in OECD countries in the second half of the last century: persistence of public expenditure and a lower bound on new interventions will push government size upward, and preferences of the electorate put a halt to this growth at some point. In this view, the fiscal policy variable is seen to consist of only a part of the total expenditure, the rest being predetermined by its past level.     

房地产税改革与土地财政困局破解——基于对地方财政影响的情景分析

地方政府过度依赖土地出让收入是当前中国公共管理面临的重要难题。改革房地产税制并触发土地制度的连锁反应是破解中国土地治理困局的基本出路。通过预测不同改革方案下典型城市住房相关土地财政收入变化,评估房地产税替代土地出让（纯）收益成为地方支柱性收入源的前景。研究发现,如果合理设计覆盖城市存量和新增住房的房地产税,可在短期内保证地方土地财政收入的相对稳定,并在远期实现房地产税替代土地出让金成为地方财政支柱的目标,增强土地财政收入的可持续性。近期政府应改变“重流转、轻保有”的状况,将房地产税培育成为地方主体税种,远期应推进城乡一体化土地市场体系、土地出让制度和土地增值税制度联动改革,使地方土地财政收入从以一次性的土地出让纯收益为主向以持续的房产保有税、土地增值税等为主转变,促进政府土地管理本位职能回归,破解土地财政与政府治理困局。     

The heterogeneous impact of taxation on economic development: New insights from a panel cointegration approach

In this paper, we study the role of taxation on long-run income performance. In the theoretical part of the study, we develop a stylized model based on Barro (1990), in which income taxation has two contradictory roles in the standard Solow (1956) setup: on the one hand, taxation appropriates resources that would otherwise be used for physical capital accumulation, and on the other, it is the source of government spending, which is used to support private production. In the empirical part of the study, the impact of consumption tax, personal income tax, corporate profit tax and property tax on income is estimated using the common correlated effects (CCE) panel cointegration approach, which allows for cross-sectional dependencies and provides both panel- and country-specific results. The panel findings for 30 OECD countries for the period of 1995–2016 indicate that only consumption tax has a statistically significant negative effect on long-run income. However, because the type and sign of the tax coefficients are heterogeneous for the country-specific results, we conclude that taxation has heterogeneous effects on income.     

How economic integration affects the vertical structure of the public sector

This paper investigates the impact of economic integration on the vertical structure of the public sector within a country. To tackle this issue we set up a model of fiscal federalism, where economic integration is assumed to affect central government tax revenues. The main findings are that when an increase of the impact of economic integration brings about a reduction in central government tax revenues, under certain conditions: (a) it reduces central government expenditure; (b) it reduces general government expenditure; (c) it increases local taxation; (d) it increases the degree of public sector decentralization. Quite interestingly, these results are consistent with different patterns of local public spending and grants to local government.     

On minimizing the welfare cost of fiscal policy: evidence from South Asia

This study evaluates whether India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka minimized the welfare cost of their fiscal policies? For this purpose it tests tax smoothing hypothesis and finds that there is a weak tax smoothing in Pakistan and Sri Lanka whilst fiscal policy in India has not been conducted in an optimal fashion in accordance with the predictions of the hypothesis. The difference in results is due to difference in budget deficits as the deficits of Pakistan and Sri Lanka are higher as compare to India so they are careful to reduce volatility in budget deficits by trying to keep close correspondence between taxes and expenditures while India, with comparatively less deficit, was more careful regarding its debt. Therefore, to minimize the cost a close correspondence between permanent expenditure and taxes are required. In this context the best policy option would be an initiation of prompt action program of tax base expansions and expenditure rationalization.     

Public infrastructure investment,output dynamics,and balanced budget fiscal rules

We study the dynamic macroeconomic effects of public infrastructure investment under a balanced budget fiscal rule, using an overlapping generations model of a small open economy. The government finances public investment by employing distortionary labor taxes. The balanced budget rule implies a negative short-run output multiplier that exceeds (in absolute terms) the positive long-run output multiplier. Larger public capital spillovers sharpen the intertemporal output tradeoff. In contrast to conventional results regarding public investment shocks, we obtain dampened cyclical responses for plausible parameter values. The cyclical dynamics arise from the interaction between the labor tax rate, the tax base, and the intergenerational spillover effects. We show that financing scenarios involving public debt creation can substantially reduce the short-run output contraction and the transitional macroeconomic fluctuations induced by public investment.     

Fiscal policy in good and bad times

In this paper we analyze whether the effect of fiscal policy differs across the business cycle. To tackle this question, we use a regime-switching error-correction framework, where nonlinearities are only modeled in the short-run and have no impact on the long-run equilibrium. Regime specific shocks to government revenue and government purchases are identified using sign restrictions. Linear combinations of the impulse responses of these basic shocks are used to construct a deficit-spending shock and a deficit-financed tax-cut shock. We find that active spending policies have a stronger impact in recession, with multipliers exceeding unity, and should be preferred to deficit-financed tax-cuts.     

Shocks derived from mining windfalls and horizontal transfers: Exploring the permanent income hypothesis in Chilean municipalities from a spatial competition approach

We explore how spatial interaction affects the strategic use of municipal income when deciding between 1) an optimal long-run expenditure strategy versus 2) using the current income to finance current activities, a phenomenon known as the permanent income hypothesis. Even when this hypothesis is grounded in temporal logic, insufficient attention has been given to the impact of spatial dependence on this type of budget decision. Therefore, we present two reasons why spatial interaction adds new insight to this discussion. First, subnational governments located inside larger functional areas have lower average costs due to the population concentration, allowing for coordination between jurisdictions to achieve more power of negotiation and to potentially exploit economies of scale. Second, local government decision-making is not independent of other jurisdictions as municipalities would constantly evaluate the others’ actions regarding local tax effort, spending, and debt. While this spatial consideration remains a challenge for theoretical modeling, we offer empirical evidence to evaluate how robust the permanent income hypothesis is when geography is incorporated. Our empirical approach uses dynamic panel data with spatial dependence on debt, expenditure, and the error term. To evaluate our hypothesis, we exploit panel data from 320 Chilean municipalities between 2008 and 2020 and use two sources of income: non-matched grants via mining windfalls and horizontal fiscal transfers among cities. The evidence indicates that jurisdictions make backward-looking decisions regarding spending; that is, there are no significant differences between the short and long run. The results for debt, however, are not robust. Policy pertaining to the use of public resources should consider the spatial dependence between municipalities which should be a crucial factor in budgetary decision-making.     

审计监督的财政治理效应研究——基于省以下地方审计机关人财物管理改革的准自然实验

审计监督是党和国家监督体系的重要组成,财政审计能对政府财政收支的真实性、合法性和效益性进行有效监督。以省以下地方审计机关人财物管理改革这一试点政策为准自然实验,从地方政府财政治理视角出发,运用双重差分法分析提升地市级审计机关独立性对地方政府财政支出效率的影响。研究发现,审计机关人财物管理改革能够有效提高地方政府财政支出效率,试点地区财政支出效率提高1.87个百分点。异质性分析结果发现,审计独立性的治理效应在财政透明度低、距离省会城市远和财政自主程度高的城市更大。通过进一步的机制分析,发现试点政策通过提高审计监督质量和优化财政支出结构两条路径提高地方政府财政支出效率。研究表明提高地方审计机关独立性可以对地方政府财政支出产生积极的治理效应。     

财政双向失衡、地方税财治理与企业避税分化

以我国A股上市区公司微观与30省区市的宏观进行匹配得到的面板数据为样本,通过构建双向固定效应模型和面板联立方程模型,就财政双向失衡对企业避税的影响路径进行实证。研究表明：我国同时存在较高的双向失衡,财政纵向失衡促进企业避税,财政横向失衡抑制企业避税。从传导路径来看,财政纵向失衡通过降低地方税收征管和政府补助强度促进企业避税,财政横向失衡通过提高地方税收征管和政府补助积极性抑制企业避税;从地区分化来看,东部地区与全样本结论一致,但在非东部地区,财政纵向失衡、横向失衡与企业避税均负相关,这主要是因为中西部地区企业减少避税能换来更多的政府补助;从地方政府债务规模分化来看,财政纵向失衡与横向失衡对企业避税的影响均在债务规模低的地区成立;从企业自身现金流分化来看,纵向失衡与企业避税的促进关系在现金流低组中成立,而横向失衡与企业避税的抑制关系在现金流高组中成立。     

Dynamics of fiscal financing in the United States

General equilibrium models that include policy rules for government spending, lump-sum transfers, and distortionary taxation on labor and capital income and on consumption expenditures are fit to US data under rich specifications of fiscal policy rules to obtain several results. First, the best-fitting model allows many fiscal instruments to respond to debt. Second, responses of aggregates to fiscal policy shocks under rich rules vary considerably from responses where only non-distortionary fiscal instruments finance debt. Third, in the short run, all fiscal instruments except labor taxes react strongly to debt, but long-run intertemporal financing comes from all components of the government’s budget constraint. Fourth, debt-financed fiscal shocks trigger long-lasting dynamics; short-run and long-run multipliers can differ markedly.     

乡镇政府财务收支状况改善路径研究

我国取消了农业税附加的相关政策带来了一系列的影响,同时乡镇财务的收支状况也出现了不同程度的恶化。农村的基本建设义务教育投入、公益事业的发展资金不足,想要基层政府的有效运行,上级财政要为乡镇企业确定合理的税收来源,利用转移支付制度来保证农村教育以及公益事业的投入。此外,乡镇政府也可以取消农业税后作为乡镇职能转变的基础,在大力征收减支活动基础上发展乡镇经济,促进乡镇经济的发展,增强乡镇的经济实力。