Government financing in an endogenous growth model with financial market restrictions

Summary. In this paper, we develop an endogenous growth model with market regulations on explicitly modeled financial intermediaries to examine the effects of alternative government financing schemes on growth, inflation, and welfare. In the presence of binding regulation, there is always a unique equilibrium. We perform four alternative policy experiments; a change in the seigniorage tax rate, a change in the seigniorage tax base, a change in the income tax and a change in the fiscal-monetary policy mix. We find that in the presence of binding legal reserve requirements, a marginal increase in government spending need not result in a reduction in the rate of economic growth if it is financed with an increase in the seigniorage tax rate. Raising the seigniorage tax base by means of an increase in the reserve requirement retards growth and it has an ambiguous effect on inflation. An increase in income tax financed government spending also suppresses growth and raises inflation although not to the extent that the required seigniorage tax rate alternative would. Switching from seigniorage to income taxation as a source of government finance is growth reducing but deflationary. From a welfare perspective, the least distortionary way of financing an increase in the government spending requirements is by means of a marginal increase in the seigniorage tax rate. Under the specification of logarithmic preferences, the optimal tax structure is indeterminate. Received: March 20, 2000; revised version: June 26, 2001     

Bayesian estimation of social welfare and tax progressivity measures

This paper examines Bayesian methods of examining posterior distributions of inequality, concentration, tax progressivity and social welfare measures. Use is made of an explicit income distribution assumption and two alternative assumptions regarding the distribution of pre-tax mean incomes within each income group. The methods are applied to a simulated distribution of individual incomes and tax payments. It is possible to identify a minimum acceptable number of income classes to be used. The results suggest support for the use of group means in practical applications, particularly where large sample sizes are available. First version received: August 2000/Final version received: July 2001 RID="*" ID="*"  This research was supported by a Melbourne University Faculty of Economics and Commerce Research Grant. We should like to thank Bill Griffiths and two referees for comments on an earlier draft.     

Financial development,institutional quality and maximizing-growth trade-off in government finance

This paper studies monetary and fiscal policies in an endogenous growth model with transaction costs. We show that the relation between long-run economic growth and both monetary and fiscal policies is subject to threshold effects, a result that gives account of a number of recent empirical findings. Furthermore, the model shows that, to finance public expenditures, growth-maximizing governments must choose relatively high seigniorage (respectively income taxation), if “institutional quality” and “financial development” indicators are low (respectively high). Thus, our model may explain why some governments resort to seigniorage and inflationary finance, and others rather resort to high tax rates, as a result of growth-maximizing strategies in different structural environments (notably concerning institutional and financial development contexts). In addition, the model allows examining how the optimal mix of government finance changes in response to different public debt contexts. A short empirical section confirms our theoretical results.     

The hidden economy in Spain – A monetary estimation, 1964–1998

The aim of this paper is to estimate the level and evolution of hidden income in Spain during the period 1964–1997. To this end, we employ the well-known monetary approach which supposes that the hidden economy is a response on the part of the economic agents to the tax burden, one which manifests itself in an excess of demand for currency. The estimation has been made on the basis of the ADL technique, an ECM and Johansen's cointegration approach. The period chosen was characterised by multiple institutional changes, an increase in the tax burden and wide-ranging financial liberalisation. This has obliged us to formulate a specific monetary model to estimate the hidden economy and is one of the original features of that model. First version received: February 1999/Final version received: March 2001     

Tax efficiency in selected Indian states

This paper attempts to measure pure tax efficiency of fifteen major Indian states (Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamilnadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal) for the period 1980–81 to 1992–93 in a manner that allows this efficiency to vary both across time as well as across states. It is discovered that there is a moral hazard problem in the design of central grants in that higher grants by the central government to the state governments reduce efficiency of tax collection by these states. The less poor states are more efficient in tax collection. The rankings of states by tax efficiency for the various years do not converge. An index of aggregate tax efficiency is calculated and it appears that this index has been stagnating. It is argued that the weight placed on tax effort in the formula determining central grants to state governments should be increased to improve tax efficiency of state governments. First version received: November 1997/final version received: November 1998     

环境成本的内部化与环境税制变迁

本文分析了环境成本产生的经济学根源,进而分析了环境成本内部化的途径。研究发现,政府环境税收政策的实施对企业利润的影响决定了环境成本内部化的途径。在完善的环境税制下,征收环境税可以促使污染企业外部成本内部化,因而环境税制是一种有效的环境经济政策。中国还没有开征专门的环境税,目前的税制在保护环境上发挥的作用不明显,有必要开征专门的环境税。本文运用制度变迁理论探讨了中国环境税制变迁的路径。     

The Structural Power of Business and the Power of Ideas: The Strange Case of the Australian Mining Tax

In 2010 the Australian federal government fought and lost an intense and very public battle with the country's mining industry over the introduction of a new ‘super-profits’ tax. The proposed tax was withdrawn and the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was removed from office. Why did the government lose this battle and what can this episode tell us about the nature and determinants of business power? We argue that business power is not an objective condition but is shaped subjectively and inter-subjectively. What counts in the power equation is not whether business investment is essential for growth or whether business will disinvest if a new tax is imposed, but whether actors believe this to be the case. One reason why the structural power of business varies is because actors’ normative and causal ideas about the value and determinants of business investment vary. In the Australian case ministers did not believe that the introduction of a new tax would jeopardise investment. Ministers did however come to believe that the mining industry had successfully persuaded a large number of voters that the introduction of a new tax would jeopardise investment, employment and growth. This is why the tax was eventually abandoned.     

财政收入最大化与地方政府地价竞争

本文借鉴制度经济学研究方法,将中央政府的若干治理手段嵌入到地方政府地价决定函数中,对财政收入最大化与地方政府地价竞争的治理策略做比较制度分析。本文认为,地方政府在地价决定中具有产业间边际财政总收入均等化的动机,适度提高农地征收价格以及服务业税负,有助于压缩地方政府的恶性竞争空间。产业性税收优惠政策可能只对那些租赁而不是持有地产的经营者才有效,可以考虑适度增加住宅所有者的税负来实现“增税降费”的财政收入结构调整,同时继续维持对营业场所以租赁为主的知识密集型服务业的税收优惠。     

A Synthesis of Contour and Flexible Wage Hypotheses

Economic instability has risen in emerging economies after capital account liberalization. A more progressive income tax policy could offer a stabilizing alternative. It could result in more revenue, more countercyclical policy, and more income equality and thus more stable demand growth. We test the effects of progressive taxes on stability using univariate and multivariate analyses based on panel data for emerging economies from 1982 to 2002 and compare those to the effects of a value added tax (VAT). We also consider possible constraints on tax policy design, such as government spending, international tax competition, and openness. Progressive taxes are associated with greater income equality and a higher likelihood of countercyclical fiscal policies. The potential benefits from progressive income taxation, though, are lower with VAT. Tax policy is also constrained by government expenditures and openness, but not by lower corporate taxes, suggesting that all income tax rates are constrained by openness.     

The effects of vertical and horizontal incentives on local tax efforts: evidence from China

Tax effort is a measure of a government’s effort to collect taxes. This study explores what impacts both vertical and horizontal incentives have on local governments’ tax efforts in China. For consistency with the literature, we first include typical economic and institutional factors in our analysis. We find that the effects of economic factors on local tax efforts are significant, but the effects of institutional factors tend to be weak. Fiscal decentralization, as a vertical incentive, has a significantly positive effect on tax efforts at the provincial level. Meanwhile, fiscal interaction, as a horizontal incentive, is also taken into account in a spatial specification to explain tax competition among local governments. The results show that local tax effort in China also depends on the horizontal incentive. Hence, to improve local tax effort, the central government should let the locals have more autonomy in collecting taxes and evaluate local tax effort by referring to tax collection in adjacent provinces simultaneously.     

The causes of government expenditure growth: A survey of the U.S. evidence

The growth of government budgets can be broken down into a-institutional and institutional components. The former component — the familiar substitution, income, and population/public goods-tax sharing effects — is estimated to contribute about two-fifths of the growth of U.S. government spending. The latter component — rent-seeking political redistributions, bureaucracy and perceptual/informational impedimentia — is important, too, but an exact imputation cannot be asserted given the state of the art in empirical public choice theory. The cross-effects on spending of the growth of regulation and tax preferences or tax expenditures, though interesting, is not pursued.     

不同监督情境下政府创新支持对企业研发投入的影响——基于农业上市公司的实证研究

近年来,“三农”问题受到极大关注。为了应对外部资源、环境、科学技术等多重压力对农业升级与发展的影响,政府出台了诸多政策支持农业企业的技术研发与创新。本文从政府干预视角分析政府补助和税费返还两种形式的政府创新支持政策对农业企业研发投入的影响,重点分析机构投资者与大股东参与公司内部治理以及社会审计事务机构参与公司外部治理这两者所发挥的不同监督作用。研究发现：第一,不同形式的政府创新支持（政府补助和税费返还）对农业企业研发投入的影响并不一致。政府补助产生替代效应,税费返还则产生互补效应。第二,持股监督（机构投资者和大股东的持股比例上升）能增强政府补助对农业企业研发投入的替代效应,也能增强税费返还对农业企业研发投入的互补效应。第三,审计监督（社会审计事务机构的审计意见）会减弱政府补助支持对农业企业研发投入的替代效应,也会减弱税费返还对农业企业研发投入的互补效应。本文的研究发现为政府制定适宜的创新支持政策,以及合理发挥持股监督与审计监督的内外部治理作用,提供一定的决策依据和理论支持。     

REGIONAL UNEMPLOYMENT DISPARITIES: AN EVALUATION OF POLICY MEASURES*

This paper analyses the efficacy of regional and federal government policies in reducing inter‐regional unemployment disparities. We use as our framework a two‐region general equilibrium model with a given freely‐mobile supply of labour. We assume inter‐regional migration to occur in response to inter‐regional utility differentials. Each region has households, firms and a regional government. In addition to regional governments, there is a federal government. The firms in a region use a single factor, labour, to produce a single good which we assume to be different to that produced in the other region. It is supplied to households and to the regional government in the form of payroll taxes. Households consume some, trade some with households in the other region and give some up to the federal government as income tax. Firms and households bargain over wages and firms then choose employment to maximise profits. The resulting equilibrium will generally not be a full‐employment one. We simulate a linearised numerical version of the model. We examine seven alternative policies, six carried out by a regional government and one by the federal government. In the first group there are traditional tax/expenditure polices as well as policies which might be seen as attacking the natural rate of unemployment: changes in unemployment benefits, changes in union power, changes in the labour force and changes in labour productivity. The federal government policy is a regionally‐differentiated fiscal policy. Contrary to expectations, many policies which have traditionally been recommended to alleviate unemployment are found, in fact, to exacerbate the unemployment problem.     

税收增长对经济增长的负面冲击

1994年税制改革以来,我国各地区税收收入连年高速增长,导致全国税收收入占GDP的比重迅速上升。研究发现这种税收收入的快速增长给经济增长带来严重不利影响。它降低了经济增长率和税后单位资本的产出水平,并且中西部地区税收增长对经济增长的负面冲击高于东部地区。这种情况对于我国保持经济长期稳定增长,有效实施西部大开发战略可能不利,政府应适时调整税收政策。     

Assessing the impact of taxes on female labor supply using a finite mixture approach

This paper expands the standard analysis of female labor supply to permit preference heterogeneity by using a finite mixture model. Using the extended model, we obtain theory consistent results whereas a traditional model produces a negative substitution effect. We use our model to illustrate the labor supply effects of a tax reform, corresponding to 1983–1992 changes in the Swedish income-tax schedule. The results shows an expected reduction in tax revenues of about 17%. Finally, we use Monte Carlo simulations and show that our proposed mixture model is robust towards different misspecifications. First version received: March 1998/final version accepted: October 1999     

Asymmetric output growth effects of government spending: Cross-sectional and panel data evidence

Using a model that accommodates asymmetric adjustments of output growth to changes in growth of government spending, the effects of aggregate and disaggregate government spending variables on output growth are examined. Both cross-section and panel regression estimations are conducted. Robustness of results to joint-endogeneity of output and government spending, alternative conditioning variables, and cointegration is investigated. Aggregate government spending appears to have positive output growth effects particularly in periods of below-trend growth in this variable. The government sector's productivity appears to be higher than non-government sector's productivity when spending growth is below-trend growth and only for non-OECD countries; no differences in sectoral productivities are detected for OECD countries. Government consumption spending has no significant output growth effects, but government investment spending has positive output growth effects particularly when its growth falls below its trend-growth; this favorable effect turns negative when government investment spending growth exceeds its trend-growth. Results are robust across alternative model specifications and estimation methods.     

Volatile Mining Revenues and State Government Budget Decisions

Mining royalties provide a volatile source of revenue for state governments in Australia. We explore the effects of changes in royalty revenue received by a state government on current-year budget decisions about expenditure, tax revenue and the budget surplus. The literature postulates different models for how lower-level government budget decisions respond to a revenue windfall from a higher level of government. Empirical evidence on these models over 1998–2019 provides strong evidence that over a half of a royalty windfall becomes a change in budget expenditure. Estimates of changes to tax revenues and the surplus are not definitive nor robust.     

Welfare Analysis of a Fiscal Reconstruction Policy in an Overlapping Generations Economy with Public Investment

Constructing an endogenously growing overlapping generations model with public investment, we examine the welfare effects of a fiscal reconstruction policy. In this paper we define a fiscal reconstruction policy as a policy where the government reduces its spending level without changing the tax revenue and allocates the surplus of the revenue to redeem public debt. We show that if government spending is not productive it is possible that a fiscal reconstruction policy improves the utilities of both the current and future generations, while if government spending is productive it can harm the utilities of both generations. Received February 26, 2002; revised version received July 8, 2002 Published online: February 17, 2003     

包税制的兴起与衰落:交易费用与征税合同的选择

在 1 9世纪甚至 2 0世纪初以前 ,包税制都是许多国家赖以征税的一个重要机制。但是 ,对于它的研究一直很少 ,也不深入。最近 ,在欧美等国 ,一种变形的包税制又开始出现。在我国的某些地方 ,税务机构也尝试着将某些税收承包给非政府机构。因此 ,研究历史上的包税制也具有一定的现实意义。本文运用交易费用理论和历史社会学的研究成果探索了包税制在近现代史上兴起和衰落的原因。     

THE LABOUR SUPPLY AND SAVINGS EFFECTS OF SUPERANNUATION TAX CHANGES*

This paper investigates the effects on labour supply, consumption and savings of a change in the superannuation tax structure, involving the taxation of contributions to a fund, pre‐retirement earnings of the fund, and the benefits received from the fund during retirement. The effects on lifetime plans of tax changes are investigated using a simple three‐period model in which the final period is retirement. The effects of unanticipated changes, requiring revisions to plans, are examined. Although the partial effects of particular tax changes are unambiguous, the effects of allowing for a government budget constraint mean that it is difficult to predict a priori how labour supply is likely to be affected. However, private savings unambiguously fall.