The location of financial sector FDI: Tax and regulation policy

This paper analyzes how corporate taxation and regulatory requirements affect the location of financial sector FDI. We use novel information on new financial services entities established by multinational firms in 83 host countries. We find a negative effect of host country taxes on the probability of choosing a particular host location. We can also confirm a significant influence of the regulatory environment. For example, stricter (equity) capital requirements negatively affect location probabilities. Our empirical approach allows us to provide new insight in how a policy measure of a given country affects other countries by estimating cross-country tax and regulation elasticities.     

我国税收结构与经济增长关系的实证检验

根据我国1985～2008年样本数据,利用多元线性回归模型对我国税收结构与经济增长的关系进行实证检验,结果表明:流转税、所得税(尤其是个人所得税)份额的增加有利于人均GDP的增长,财产税的经济效应尚未体现,宏观税负和赤字融资的增加已经抑制了人均GDP的增长。目前我国需要进一步完善税制,加强征收管理,提高所得税份额,减少债务融资规模。     

Depositors’ trust: Some empirical evidence from Indonesia

We develop a comprehensive index, based on Robbins and Judge’s (2008) five dimensions of trust, to measure depositors’ trust in individual banks as well as trust in the banking industry and financial safety net. Using a survey of 992 retail depositors in Indonesia, we find that trust in individual banks where depositors save their money is greater than trust in the overall banking industry and financial safety net. We also find that depositors’ trust is affected by personal characteristics—for instance, women and older depositors have relatively less trust. Depositors tend to put their trust in individual banks and the financial system if they have greater trust in information conveyed by the government. Religious and economic values have positive effects on depositors’ trust at both the micro and macro levels. Our results also document that risk-taking behavior is positively associated with depositors’ trust. Furthermore, we find that more-educated depositors have significantly less trust. This finding might imply that the erosion of market discipline by depositors in a country with relatively generous deposit insurance, such as Indonesia, can be mitigated through greater financial literacy.     

A note on modelling economic growth determinants in the Dominican Republic

The article models economic growth determinants in the Dominican Republic. The exercise considers a panel of 25 candidate explanatory variables observed during the last three decades of the twentieth century. The time series are selected on the basis of economic theory and previous findings in the cross-country empirical growth literature. The modelling reveals that the annual growth rate of real gross domestic product per capita is, on average, inversely associated to a proxy for market distortions, and positively related to government expenditure, economic growth in the United States of America, and an index of globalization comprising international trade and migration variables.     

Differences in Hours Worked in the OECD: Institutions or Fiscal Policies?

We study the determinants of the level and the evolution of per capita hours worked in a panel of OECD countries since the 1970s. Following Pesaran (2006) , our empirical strategy allows for the possibility of cross‐sectionally correlated error terms due to unobserved common factors, which are potentially nonstationary. We find that much of the variation in per capita hours worked across countries and over time can be explained by differences in the level and structure of taxes and government expenditures. Differences in (the evolution of) labor and product market institutions have much less of a role to play. Our results show that a careful treatment of the time‐series properties of the data is crucial.     

Personal income tax mimicry: evidence from international panel data

This paper investigates personal income tax (PIT) mimicry at the international level. It is the first to empirically investigate the extent to which PIT mimicry varies along the tax schedule and the first to include nations which are not part of the OECD. We use data on international personal income tax schedules from the world tax indicators to estimate marginal and average tax rates at various multiples of per capita gross domestic product (GDP). These tax rates are then used to estimate the extent to which countries respond to their neighbors’ PIT policy. We find evidence of PIT mimicry using a balanced panel of 53 countries over 24 years. This finding is strongest for tax rates at lower multiples of per capita GDP and survives several robustness checks.     

基于政府债务视角的地方经济发展影响因素研究

近年来,我国各级地方政府融资平台发展迅速,地方政府债券受到各地追捧,本文就这一现象带来的后果进行深入分析,从政府债务从手探讨影响地方经济发展的相关因素。本文以全国30个省（不包括西藏）作为研究对象,收集其在2008年至2012年期间人均GDP增长率、政府负债余额、固定资产投资额、进出口总额、人均GDP等指标的数值进行实证分析。研究结果表明,政府债务与地方经济发展呈倒“U”型关系。     

Development and freedom as risk management

Amartya Sen has argued that many development and freedom measures such as health, education, political and civil liberties are important constituents of human welfare. We concur with Sen and conjecture that an important reason these measures affect human welfare is because they allow individuals to better cope with risk and uncertainty that cannot be hedged using market based insurance mechanisms. We find some empirical support for this conjecture in that the volatility of consumption growth appears to be negatively related to life expectancy, political rights, and property rights (but is positively related to the rate of literacy) after controlling for the size of the country, per capita income, and openness to trade and capital flows, (which, as one would expect, also reduce consumption growth volatility) in cross-country panel regressions.     

Tax Setting in a Federal System: The Case of Personal Income Taxation in Canada

In a decentralised tax system, the effects of tax policies enacted by one government are not confined to its own jurisdiction. First, if both the regional and the federal levels of government co-occupy the same fields of taxation, tax rate increases by one layer of government will reduce taxes collected by the other. Second, if the tax base is mobile, tax rate increases by one regional government will raise the amount of taxes collected by other regional governments. These sources of fiscal interdependence are called in the literature vertical and horizontal tax externalities, respectively. Third, as Smart (1998) shows, if equalisation transfers are present, an increase in the standard equalisation tax rate provides incentives to raise taxes to the receiving provinces. A way to check the empirical relevance of these hypotheses is to test for the existence of interactions between the regional tax rate, on the one hand, and the federal tax rate, the tax rate set by competing regions, and the standard equalisation tax rate, on the other hand. Following this approach, this paper estimates provincial tax setting functions with data on Canadian personal income taxation for the period 1982–1996. We find a significant positive response of provincial tax rates to changes in the federal income tax rate, the tax rates of competing provinces, and the standard equalisation rate (only for receiving provinces). We also find that the reaction to horizontal competition is stronger in the provinces that do not receive equalisation transfers.     

Do corporate tax cuts increase investments?

This paper studies the effect of corporate taxes on investment. Since firms with a foreign parent have more cross-country profit shifting opportunities than domestically owned firms do, their effective tax rate and, consequently, their tax-induced costs to investment are lower. We therefore expect capital investment responses to a corporate tax cut to be heterogeneous across firms. Using firm-level data on German corporations, we exploit the 2008 tax reform, which substantially cut corporate taxes as an exogenous policy shock and expect domestically owned firms' investments to be more responsive to the reform. We show exactly this in a difference-in-differences setting. We find that the reduction in corporate tax payments led to a one-to-one increase in the real investments of domestic firms. The effect is stronger for domestic firms relying more on internal funds. Correspondingly, labor investment increased more for domestic firms, ensuring a constant mix of input factors. In addition, we show that domestic firms' sales grew faster after the tax cut than the sales of foreign-owned firms. Our results imply that corporate tax changes can increase corporate investment but that domestic firms benefit more than foreign-owned firms from a tax cut through higher investment responses resulting in greater sales growth.     

Migration and the welfare state: The economic power of the non-voter?

This paper investigates the impact of emigration on the political choice of the size of the welfare state. Mobility has two countervailing effects: the political participation effect and the tax base effect. With emigration, the composition of the constituency changes. This increases the political influence of the less mobile part of the population. But the new political majority then also has to take into account that emigration reduces tax revenues and thereby affects the feasible set of redistribution policies. We find that the direction of the total effect of migration depends on the initial income distribution in the economy. Our results also contribute to the empirical debate on the validity of the median-voter approach in cross-country studies for explaining the relation between income inequality and redistribution levels. JEL Classification F22 · H50 · D31 · D72     

房价对城镇居民收入差距的影响研究

依据我国33个大中城市2000—2017年的面板数据构建动态面板模型,考量房价对城镇居民收入差距的影响及区域性差异。结果表明：房价上涨对于城镇居民收入差距扩大具有显著正向影响,且对东部城市的影响显著高于非东部城市,人均GDP、政府教育投入、城镇人口比重和第三产业比重也对城镇居民收入差距具有一定影响。鉴此,宜从税收政策、产业结构、政府教育投入及居住成本等方面合理控制城镇居民收入差距。     

Societal trust and corporate tax avoidance

Using an international sample of firms from 25 countries and a country-level index for societal trust, we document that societal trust is negatively associated with tax avoidance, even after controlling for other institutional determinants, such as home country legal institutions and tax system characteristics. We explore the effects of two country-level institutional characteristics—strength of legal institutions and capital market pressure—on the relation between societal trust and tax avoidance. We find that the relation between trust and tax avoidance is less pronounced when the legal institutions in a country are stronger and is more pronounced when the capital market pressure is stronger. Finally, we examine the relation between societal trust and tax evasion, an extreme and illegal form of tax avoidance. We show that societal trust is negatively related to tax evasion and the negative relation is less pronounced when legal institutions are stronger.     

The Growth and Welfare Effects of Deficit‐Financed Dividend Tax Cuts

I develop a tractable growth model that allows me to study analytically transition dynamics and welfare in response to a deficit‐financed cut of the tax rate on distributed dividends. I then carry out a quantitative assessment of the Job Growth and Taxpayer Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA) of 2003. I find that the Act produces lower steady‐state growth despite the fact that the economy’s saving and employment ratios rise. Most importantly, it produces a welfare loss of 19.34% of annual consumption per capita—a substantial effect driven by the fact that the steady‐state growth rate falls from 2% to 1.08%.     

Banks as Tax Planning Intermediaries

We provide the first large‐scale empirical evidence of banks functioning as tax planning intermediaries. We posit that some banks specialize in assisting corporate clients with tax planning. In this role, banks make use of their centrality in financial relationships; access to private information; and ability to structure, execute, and participate in tax planning transactions for clients. We measure bank‐client relationships using loan contracts and measure client tax planning using either the cash effective tax rate or the unrecognized tax benefit balance. Using a difference‐in‐differences design, we find that firms experience meaningful tax reductions when they begin a relationship with a bank whose existing clients engage in above‐median tax planning. The effects of pairing with such tax intermediary banks are concentrated in relationships with larger or longer maturity loans, clients with foreign income or greater credit risk, and when the bank is an industry specialist or has above‐median investment banking activities. Finally, we find that potential clients are more likely to choose tax intermediary banks than nontax intermediary banks, suggesting that tax intermediary banks benefit by attracting new business. Collectively, our results suggest that some banks act as tax planning intermediaries, a role beyond the traditional one of financial intermediary.     

我国油气资源税由从量计征改为从价计征的政策效应——基于双重差分法的计量分析

基于双重差分法,对西部地区油气资源税由从量计征改为从价计证的政策效果进行评估,以单位产值能耗、污染排放量和人均资源税收入作为政策效果变量,实证研究表明,油气从价税改革促使西部地区单位产出能耗相对于样本均值下降了7.90~8.55个百分点,污染排放量减少约1556吨,人均资源税收入相对于样本均值增加了2.74~3.03个百分点,通过采用不同处理方法进行稳健性检验后,以上结论仍然成立。     

Comment on: “Macroeconomic consequences of terror: theory and the case of Israel”

This paper is a pioneering attempt to take a systematic look at the effects of terror in Israel. It presents a theoretical analysis of the macroeconomic consequences of terror followed by empirical evidence for Israel. The theory part utilizes a steady state version of Blanchard (1985) finite lives model in which each individual faces a constant probability of death at every moment. The empirical part is, for the most part, based on level and first difference VAR's between GNP, non durable consumption, investment and exports (all in per capita terms) augmented by a proxy for the intensity of terror and a measure of the real rate of interest. The theory is used as a broad guiding device to qualitatively guide the empirical work rather than for providing a precise structure to be estimated.The main implications of the theory are that, by raising the probability of death, an increase in terror reduces investment, production and consumption. Essentially, by increasing the probability of death d, an increase in terror activity reduces the incentive to save and with it the steady state level of capital, production and consumption. In parallel the increase in d raises the interest rate and reduces total wealth. The paper augments Blanchard's model with a welfare maximizing government that responds to the increase in terror activity by raising government expenditures designed to partially offset its impact on the probability of death.The main results of the empirical part are that, in Israel, the terror variable exerts a negative and significant impact on the macroeconomic variables mentioned above. A counterfactual experiment implies that if terror continues at the level it had been at (between the last quarter of 2002 and the third quarter of 2003) up to the third quarter of 2005 then, in comparison to a no terror benchmark, annual GDP per capita is lower by roughly 2 percent per year, non durable consumption per capita is lower by 1 percent per year and the level of investment per capita is lower by 10 percent annually. The paper also contains an empirical analysis of the differential impact of terror on domestic versus foreign tourists.My discussion focusses on possible broader interpretations of the main empirical results of the paper in light of its theoretical model and of the Israeli political and economic scene since the inception of the Oslo peace process in the mid nineties.     

政府内源融资:增税的经济约束

政府通过增加税收的内源融资受到经济增长的约束表现为总量和结构两方面。实证结果表明 ,中国近 5年税收的快速增长中政府增税融资比重在 2 5 %——— 5 4 %之间。增税使宏观税负增加不超过2 2 .9% ,宏观税负与政府支出占GDP比重相差不超过 3个百分点为宜 ;增税应以消费支出税类为主 ,资本收入税类、劳动所得税类的增税空间很小。     

Be a better boss. Employee treatment,trust level and family business innovation: Evidence from China

This study examines the impact of employee treatment on family business innovation. Our empirical research shows that beneficial employee treatment can increase family business innovation input and output. Moreover, the empirical conclusions pass the robustness and endogeneity tests. An additional analysis shows that non-salary aspects of employee treatment can significantly increase the quantity and quality of innovation output; however, they have little to no impact on innovation input. Further, we find that the higher the levels of trust in society, trust in organizational decisions, and trust in co-workers are, the stronger is the role of employee treatment in family business innovation.     

Some Equity and Efficiency Considerations of International Tax Competition

The paper uses a dynamic 2-country equilibrium model with imperfections in the labour market calibrated for the US and EU economy to investigate dynamic efficiency and equity aspects of international tax competition. We focus on tax policy where governments can only decide on the levels of corporate and labour taxes, given a constant share of government consumption and transfers in GDP and a constant VAT rate. We find that the welfare effect of a tax shift from capital to labour depends heavily on the distortionary nature of labour taxes. In contrast to existing results we find substantial positive international spillover effects of corporate tax reduction in one country, with long term gains outweighing short term losses. Results are very different, however, if one goes beyond the representative agent framework. According to our results, a tax switch is most likely not Pareto improving since net wages tend to decline in both regions even in the long run.