The Economic Determinants of Conditional Conservatism

Abstract:  We study the economic determinants of conditional conservatism. Consistent with prior literature, we find that contracting induces only conditional conservatism and litigation induces both conditional and unconditional conservatism. We extend prior evidence by Qiang (2007) by showing that taxation and regulation induce not only unconditional conservatism, but conditional conservatism as well. We show that in certain scenarios taxation and regulation create incentives to shift income from periods with high taxation pressure and high public scrutiny to periods with lower taxation pressure and lower public scrutiny. These income shifting strategies are implemented by recognising current economic losses that, given managerial incentives to report aggressively, would not have been recognized otherwise, or by delaying the recognition of current economic gains that would have been recognized had circumstances been different.     

Shadow-Pricing Interpretation of the Pigovian Rule for the Optimal Provision of Public Goods: A Note

The Pigovian rule for the optimal public goods provision with distortionary taxation is given a new interpretation. It relates the Pigovian rule to project evaluation rules in terms of shadow prices. Our formula for the Pigovian rule is compared with that given by existing literature for cases in which commodity taxes are set optimally to articulate the implications of their results. This approach also renders a clear insight on the nature of resource allocation and income redistribution effect involved in the public goods provision in a heterogeneous-consumers economy.     

Optimal Fiscal Policy with Consumption Taxation

We characterize optimal fiscal policies in a general equilibrium model with monopolistic competition and endogenous public spending. The government can tax consumption, as alternative to labor income taxes. Consumption taxation acts as indirect taxation of profits (intratemporal gains of taxing consumption) and enables the policymaker to manage the burden of public debt more efficiently (intertemporal gains of taxing consumption). We show analytically that these two gains imply that the optimal share of government spending is higher under consumption taxation than with labor income taxation. Then, we quantify numerically each of these gains by calibrating the model on the U.S. economy.     

Globalisation squeezes the public sector—is it so obvious?

It is widely perceived that globalization squeezes public sector activities by making taxation more costly. This is attributed to increased factor mobility and to a more elastic labour demand due to improved scope for relocation of production, and thus employment across countries. We argue that this consensus view overlooks that gains from trade unambiguously work to lower the marginal costs of public funds. Moreover, we argue that a more elastic labour demand may actually reduce the marginal costs of labour income taxation and that globalization may actually reduce the labour demand elasticity.     

A normative analysis of capital income taxes in the presence of aggregate risk

A simple portfolio model is used to examine the efficiency effects of capital income taxes when the economy faces aggregate risk. To achieve a first best optimum the use of state contingent lump sum taxes is required. Through the tax policy the riskiness of total consumption is partly assigned to the private consumption and partly to the public consumption. State independent income taxes may generate a misallocation of risk and distort the allocation of resources between assets. The second best optimum, representing a trade-off between these inefficiencies, is characterized. Uniform taxation is shown to be optimal only in very special cases. Finally, the second best optimality rule for public consumption is extended to the case of uncertainty.     

Environmental Policy,Efficient Taxation and Unemployment

In this paper, I consider environmental policy as part of a mixed tax problem with a general income tax and linear commodity taxes. I assume that the wage rate is determined by bargaining between unions and firms. The results show that the change in the number of employed persons, following a change in the use of a tax instrument, affects the optimal tax structure via two channels; (i) it makes the tax revenues available for public expenditures more or less costly to collect, and (ii) it affects the aggregate demand for the good that causes the environmental damage. This means that the use of taxation to counteract the labor market imperfection is not easily separated from the environmental aspects of tax policy.JEL Code: D62, H21, J60     

Mixed Tax Systems and the Public Provision of Private Goods

In contrast to what used to be conventional wisdom among economists,several recent contributions have shown that in-kind transfersschemes can be welfare-improving in the presence of distortionarytaxes (usually, linear taxes or a general income tax). In thisnote, we extend previous work by considering the most generaltax system compatible with reasonable information constraints,i.e. a mix of linear indirect and non-linear direct taxes. Threemain results are noted. We find that in the presence of a mixedtax system (as opposed to the non-linear income tax alone): i) not only encouraged but also discouraged goods satisfy a conditionfor the desirability of public provision; ii) there is a tendencyfor the optimal level of in-kind transfers to be lower; iii)there is a basic equivalence between uniform and income-contingentin-kind transfers. We also show how previous results can be derivedas special cases of ours and others have to be modified to accountfor the mixed tax system.     

Fiscal incentives and political budget cycles in China

Political budget cycles in democracies have been extensively analyzed, but few studies of non-democracies exist. This paper explores political budget cycles in China’s provinces. Using data from Chinese provinces from 1980 to 2006, the analysis finds that the effects of a provincial leader’s tenure on political budget cycles are minimal, implying a weak causal relationship between spending composition and a politician’s time in office at the provincial level. However, there exists a national coordinated cycle associated with the timing of the National Congress of the Communist Party (NCCP). Two years prior to the NCCP, politicians are likely to shift public spending toward capital expenditures, such as innovation funds and capital construction, and away from current expenditures, such as agricultural subsidies. The opposite pattern occurs during the year of the NCCP, when politicians increase current expenditures, such as social expenditures and government administration, and decrease capital expenditures. The increased capital expenditures 2 years prior to the NCCP are accompanied by an increase in taxation and total aggregate spending. The empirical results indicate that provincial budget cycles are mainly driven by national policies rather than by provincial leaders’ personal career incentives. Chinese leaders’ fiscal behaviors are constrained by the dynamics of the national leadership transition, resulting in similar distortions to those found in the democratic countries.     

From the global income tax to the dual income tax: Recent tax reforms in the Nordic countries

The paper discusses the recent drive toward a system of dual income taxation (DIT) in the Nordic countries. The pure version of this system combines progressive taxation of labor and transfer incomes with a proportional tax on income from capital at a level equal to the corporate income tax rate. The paper considers the motives for the introduction of this new income tax system, ranging from abstract theoretical arguments to very pragmatic considerations. While the Nordic DIT system violates the principles of the conventional personal income tax, it is argued that it may in fact be more in line with the philosophy of a true Haig-Simons comprehensive income tax. It is also suggested that the DIT system may cause fewer distortions to resource allocation than the conventional income tax. On the debit side, the paper points out several practical problems of taxing income from small enterprises under the differentiated income tax.     

Capital Controls as Taxation Policy

This paper studies the public finance implications ofcontrols on international financial capital flows, proposinga model of controls as distortionary taxation. The model formalizesa capital controls rule that conforms real-world stylized factsand is sustainable in the long-run. Capital controls are shownto distort agents' optimal intratemporal portfolio decisionsand intertemporal consumption decisions, affecting the dynamicsof financial and real variables. We use the model to analyzethe feasible set of tax instruments—in terms of level andmix—available to the government and the complex relationshipsbetween expenditures and taxes mediated by the foreign sector.     

超越再分配调节:对税收促进共同富裕作用的全景认识及政策建议

税收是影响共同富裕的重要因素,但目前社会各界对税收与共同富裕之间的关系的认识,更多局限于通过收入转移实现再分配进而缩小贫富差距方面。基于理论逻辑与政策实践相映照、历史经验与发展进路相结合的分析表明,税收对共同富裕的影响是超越再分配调节的,理应在广阔的时代视阈下形成对税收促进共同富裕作用的全景认识。进入后小康时代,税收促进共同富裕的作用定位是推动经济高质量发展、优化社会分配结构、保障公共服务供给、促进绿色转型发展、缓解空间发展不平衡、助推民主法治建设。对照这六大作用定位的基本要求,目前税收在促进共同富裕方面还存在一些薄弱环节与不完善之处。因此,今后要以实现共同富裕为目标导向,找准公平与效率的结合点,进一步深化税制改革、完善现代税制,使税收在扎实推动共同富裕进程中更好地发挥作用。     

Public and private spending for environmental protection: a cross‐country policy analysis

OECD data are used to investigate public and private environmental expenditures and, although they are more complete and consistent than other datasets, they are still poor. This is important in the context of measuring the benefits of environmental protection, when little is really known about its actual costs. Despite these limitations, this study demonstrates that there has been no shift towards an increasing private sector burden relative to the public sector over time. The paper also finds little evidence to show that environmental expenditures negatively impact on economic growth, although there is inconsistency between the ‘no effects’ finding of the competitiveness literature and the ‘negative effects’ finding of most of the productivity literature. Finally, the elasticity of expenditure with respect to income is found to be 1.2, lower than would be expected if the ‘environmental demand effect’ is significant in explaining the downward slope of the environmental Kuznets curve.     

Optimal Capital Income Taxes and Capital Controls in Small Open Economies

This paper studies the optimal taxation of capital income in a simplemodel of a small open economy where domestic residents can evade taxeson their foreign investment income. The national government can onlytax domestic capital income and can impose capital controls, whichhowever absorb real resources. The design of optimal policy in thismodel depends on the revenue needs of the government. For relativelylow levels of government expenditures, it turns out that the countrydoes not levy capital income taxes but may restrict capital exports.Otherwise, the country taxes domestic capital income and sets capitalcontrols such that capital exports are driven to zero, at an optimum.In contrast to other models with capital controls it turns out thatthis policy can lead to underinvestment in domestic capital.JEL Classification Number: E 62, F 41, H 21     

The marginal cost of public funds and the flypaper effect

A lump-sum intergovernmental transfer has a “price effect”, as well as an “income effect”, because it allows the recipient government to reduce its tax rate, which lowers its marginal cost of public funds, while still providing the same level of public service. This reduction in the effective price of providing the public service helps to explain the “flypaper effect”—the empirical observation that a lump-sum grant has a much larger effect on spending than an increase in personal income. Contrary to the assertions of Mieszkowski (Modern Public Finance, 1994) and Hines and Thaler (J. Econ. Perspect. 9:217–226, 1995), a model of a benevolent local government financing its expenditures with a distortionary tax predicts flypaper effects from lump-sum grants that are similar to those observed in many econometric studies.     

Welfare Policies, Labour Taxation and International Integration

How will international integration affect welfare policies? This paper considers the possibilities of financing public sector activities (public consumption and social security expenses) by general (wage) taxation in an economy which becomes more integrated in international product markets. Even if labour is internationally immobile, the increased mobility of products and hence jobs implies a change in the distortions arising from taxes and social security contributions levied on labour income. Since financing of social security via general taxation involves a common resource problem the effects of international integration depend critically on the institutional structure of the labour market. This paper shows that increased international integration inducing more product market competition implies that it becomes more costly to maintain welfare systems financed by general taxation.     

Consumption Taxation and Endogenous Growth in a Model with New Generations

This article studies the implications of consumption taxation on capital accumulation in a one-sector endogenous growth model with finite horizons. A tax on consumption, when tax revenues are lump-sum rebated to consumers, redistributes income between living generations and future, still unborn, generations, and therefore depresses aggregate consumption and raises saving, stimulating capital accumulation and economic growth. If however the resources from taxation are used for financing unproductive public spending, the effect of the consumption tax on the endogenous growth rate disappears as no intergenerational redistribution of income occurs. Finally, a consumption tax hike accompanied by a compensatory reduction of public debt increases long-run economic growth and reduces the consumption-output ratio. Our results on consumption taxation differ substantially from those obtained within the endogenous growth literature.     

Taxation and Migration in a Federal System

This paper discusses how taxation may affect migration, economic efficiency and income distribution. The institutional framework is a federal system, in which local authorities are responsible for the supply of public services and the financing of these services, and where the central authorities are in charge of income redistribution. The main conclusion is that a moderate policy of income redistribution is associated with greater centralization of the work force and greater economic inefficiency than is the case with both radical and more limited policies of redistribution.     

Compulsory Savings: Efficiency and Redistribution On the Interaction of Means Tested Basic Income and Public Pensions

In the presence of means tested basic income for old age, households will tend to reduce precautionary savings to an inefficiently low level. We explore how this might serve as a justification for a compulsory public pension system. In a representative agent framework with two income types, compulsory savings are found to be Pareto-improving up to a point. Beyond that point, increases in contribution rates simply result in increasingly regressive (implicit) taxation. Similar results are found for pay-as-you-go pensions. On the basis of our model we argue that the introduction of a funded pension component may help the German pension system to cope with demographic change more efficiently.     

The stimulative effects of intergovernmental grants and the marginal cost of public funds

This paper tests the hypothesis that the stimulative effects of intergovernmental grants increase with the marginal cost of public funds of the recipient government. We present a simple theoretical framework that shows how a lump-sum transfer stimulates the marginal expenditures of a recipient government through an income effect and a price effect. We then test the prediction of this model using Canadian provincial data and exploit the discontinuity in the equalization grants allocation formula to identify the effects of grants. Our results indicate that the stimulative effects of lump-sum grants on spending increase with the provincial government’s marginal cost of public funds (MCF). One policy implication of our results is that higher intergovernmental transfers may be welfare improving if the federal government has a lower MCF than the provinces.