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.     

Union wage setting and progressive income taxation with heterogeneous labor: theory and evidence from the German income tax reforms 1986–1990

This paper analyzes the effects of tax shifting in a model with union wage setting and progressive income taxation. The setup allows for different skill levels of the workforce and accounts for the union's distributional objective of income equality. The theoretical predictions of the model are empirically tested with a panel of German micro-data covering the period of the income tax reforms 1986–1990. It is shown that average taxes raise wages, whereas increasing the progressivity of the tax system reduces wages. The effect of progressivity on high-skilled labor tends to be less significant and smaller. Stronger preferences for equality compress the (pre-tax) wage distribution.     

我国财政分权对垂直财政状况的影响——协调失灵将导致财政赤字的产生

在财政分权增加了协调失败可能性的理论假设下,本文利用GLS的随机效用模型对我国30个省级政府和中央政府1995-2006年的财政数据进行回归研究,推证出协调失灵将导致财政赤字的产生。研究结果表明:税收权力的转移和转移支付在不同程度上显著的增加了省级和中央的财政赤字,恶化了两级财政状况。     

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。     

Long-run growth and welfare effects of public policies with distortionary taxation

In a one-sector growth model with infrastructure investment, we study the impact of fiscal policies on growth. The government collects taxes on labor income and profits. The government uses these revenues to purchase infrastructure investment, provide utility enhancing government services, and to provide transfer payments to the households. We show that the balanced growth rate is an increasing function of the percent of government revenues that goes to infrastructure. We find that the growth maximizing mix of taxes depends on the elasticity of substitution between inputs. In particular, with distortionary taxes, the growth maximizing tax rate on capital is higher the lower the elasticity of substitution between private physical capital and public capital. In addition, the growth maximizing size of the government is higher when the elasticity of substitution between public and private inputs is low. We also investigate welfare effects of other public expenditures as well. Depending on the elasticity of substitution in production, the welfare implications of different public policies can be substantial.     

Income tax competition at the State and Local Level in Switzerland

Tax competition is supposed to lead to inefficiencies in the provision of public goods and difficulties for decentralized redistribution. A necessary condition for these effects to occur is that residence and location decisions are determined by fiscal considerations. In this paper, the impact of personal income taxes and transfer payments on residence decisions of taxpayers is analyzed using cross sectional data on the distribution of different groups of taxpayers in different income groups among the 26 Swiss cantons and the 137 largest Swiss cities. We find that tax competition with respect to personal income taxes is relatively strong in Switzerland.     

General equilibrium and optimal taxes

It is shown that if subsidies are not excessive, there exists a general competitive equilibrium in the presence of a complex tax structure. Furthermore, under certain continuity assumptions, a tax structure which is optimal from the social point of view can be determined. Procedures maximize quasi-concave after tax profit functions. Consumers have convex budget sets reflect- ing their income from sales and profits minus taxes on fixed income and progressive sales taxes. Their preferences are interdependent, intransitive and incomplete. The government provides public goods and determines the optimal tax regime on the basis of its preferences on the final competitive consumption allocation.     

The Revenue Adequacy of Site Value Taxation in a Ricardian System of Economic Growth

A bstract . The federal administration has sought to reduce the growth of federal expenditures by shifting some government costs to state and local governments. An increased expenditure burden for the latter governments would require increased tax rates for existing types of taxes that have adverse impacts on economic incentives. Land taxes are considered as a source of revenue because of their efficiency aspects. Unfortunately this idea is all too often dismissed because of alleged revenue inadequacy. Thus an analysis is called for of the revenue adequacy of site value taxation in a Ricardian model of economic growth. The model allows analysis of revenue adequacy over time in an economic growth context that is suited for the long range tax-expenditure planning horizon with which local governments are faced. When revenue needs are primarily dependent upon the population size, and the fisc is initially operating at a deficit, for a land tax to permit attainment of balance, per capita rents must be increasing over time. Also when the economy's public service demand is primarily dependent upon income, deficits will not occur if rental share exceeds the share of income devoted to public output. Not all income goes to fiscal output, so rent eventually exceeds expenditures.     

国家审计如何促进政府预算执行绩效的提升

以2007—2020年我国省级面板数据为样本,研究国家审计与政府预算执行绩效之间的关系及其作用机理。从实证角度验证了国家审计对政府预算执行绩效的提升作用,发现政府预算执行绩效具有空间自相关特性,同时国家审计对政府预算执行绩效的影响存在正向空间溢出效应;国家审计通过直接和间接两条路径促进了政府预算执行绩效的提高,政府效率和市场环境在间接路径中发挥了双重中介作用;2013年全国地方政府债务审计对政府预算执行绩效产生了明显的事件冲击效应;地方发展和审计强度差异均会对国家审计提升政府预算执行绩效产生明显的调节作用。     

Accounting for Public Recreation Expenditures

A bstract . Understanding why local parks and recreation budgets are set at particular levels is an interesting but difficult area in which to conduct research. In order to help clarify some of the important ideas, 22 hypotheses are developed and tested, correlating for 103 United States cities , the relationships of dependent variables (city's total recreation budget, recreation as a percent of total expenditure and recreation expenditure per capita) to selected sets of urban variables identified as demographic, labor force structure, local income, and public service variables. Results of the analysis suggest that the size of park budgets is positively associated with pet cent of population Non-White, birth, death and marriage rates, crime rates, non-agricultural employment , white collar employment, and income growth. Variables inversely related to budgets include the percent of lower to middle income groups and expenditures for education.     

Political Profit: Taxing and Spending in the Hierarchical State

A bstract . The actions of government fall into two types: taxes (the taking of property ) and expenditures (the awarding of gifts ). Politicians profit as long as the value of resources raised from taxation exceeds the cost of expenditures. From their point of view, fiscal efficiency consists in maximizing the support obtained by spending and minimizing the opposition generated by taxing. This is accomplished by spending on well-organized groups and taxing the uninformed public. This results in the "iron law of political redistribution" in which income and wealth are transferred from the latter to the former. In a hierarchical State , it is usually profitable for those at the top to centralize control over taxing and spending, if for no other reason than to make it difficult for politicians at lower levels to compete against them. This gives rise to the "law of hierarchical centralization "—in a hierarchical State, power becomes centralized over time. The greater the power of government, the faster this process takes place. In order to avoid this problem, one could design constitutions which are non-hierarchical in nature, in which each unit of government is completely autonomous from the others, as firms are in a free market.     

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.     

Climate Change Policies and Tax Recycling Schemes: Simulations with a Dynamic General Equilibrium Model of the Italian Economy

A dynamic general equilibrium model of the Italian economy is used to assess the impact of carbon taxation (or auctioned carbon permits), where additional revenue is used to cut either existing taxes on labor or on capital income. Simulation results do not support the existence of the so-called "double dividend" when labor taxes are reduced, whereas lower tax rates on capital have mild positive effects on growth and welfare, with progressivity properties on income distribution. These findings hinge on the assumptions of open economy, given world interest rate, and capital mobility.     

Income Level and Inflation Strain in the United States: 1971–1975

A bstract . Estimates of net inflationary effects in the United States from 1971 to 1975 are attempted by income level. The central concept is inflation strain , or the difference between the percentage change in prices and incomes as a percentage of change in incomes. Trends in prices are derived from United States Bureau of Labor Statistics data on lower and higher family budgets , admittedly subject to significant error, but the best we have. Equivalent income trends are estimated from data reported in the P-60 series of the United States Bureau of the Census. Two findings are indicated. The first is that both higher and lower budget families experienced inflation strain, although the strain, of course, was substantially greater for lower budget families. The second finding is that the primary source of strain for the lower budget families was food , whereas the primary source of strain for the higher budget family was taxes , both income and Social Security taxes. The richer are getting poorer more slowly than the poor. Limitations of the techniques and data are analyzed.     

Optimal fiscal policy under learning

This paper characterizes optimal fiscal policy when agents learn about future taxation. A benevolent and fully rational government chooses taxes on labor income and state-contingent bonds to finance public spending, considering that private agents form their expectations through a learning algorithm. Facing a trade-off between distortionary taxes and distorted expectations, the Ramsey planner chooses the policy that minimizes the total cost of distortions. The analysis produces two main results. First, the government will use fiscal variables to manipulate expectations, reducing taxes and issuing debt at times of pessimism and doing the opposite at times of optimism. This speeds up learning. Second, the expectation-dependent fiscal plan is also history-dependent, and it prescribes taxes that are not as smooth and more persistent than under rational expectations. These findings are robust to alternative learning algorithms.     

Ambiguous effects of tax progressivity — theory and Danish evidence

Recent tax reforms in the OECD area have aimed at reducing the progressivity of labour income taxation by reducing marginal taxes for given average taxes. Theory has shown that this reduces employment/production when workers and firms determine wages through bargaining. This paper shows that an opposite effect arises when both wages and working hours are subject to bargaining. This may reverse the traditional result and this is especially likely if the bargaining power of workers is low and if labour supply is relatively elastic. In conclusion, the overall effect of a reduction in progressivity is ambiguous. The empirical estimates for Denmark indicate that the overall effect is negative for blue-collar workers and neutral for white-collar workers.     

The winners and losers of tax reform: An assessment under financial integration

I quantify the macroeconomic and redistributive effects of the unilateral elimination of the capital income tax in a two-country, heterogeneous-agent incomplete markets model with progressive labor income taxes. Home, by implementing the reform, induces government responses where labor income is taxed in Home and mostly subsidized in Foreign. In addition, post-reform price dynamics reduce Home’s wealth and suppress households’ ability to do consumption smoothing, with negative effects on the majority—particularly on the poor. In turn, Foreign accumulates wealth, and price movements work particularly in favor of the poor. As a result, a large majority in Home prefers the status quo whereas Foreign supports the reform unanimously. These findings are robust to alternative scenarios where (i) the borrowing constraints are relaxed, (ii) both countries jointly eliminate capital income taxes, (iii) foreign interest income is taxed, and (iv) Home capital income tax is reduced from 40% to 35%.     

The London Business School with Gower Publishing

Last year the Chancellor followed "the path of prudence and caution", cutting taxes by £4bn and budgeting for a public sector surplus of £3bn. This year - rather more compellingly - he is travelling the same route. Against the background of a record current account deficit and rising inflation, Mr. Lawson has tightened fiscal policy, cutting taxes in 1989–90 by nearly £2bn - less than is needed to offset real fiscal drag. His main priority, reaffirmed in the Budget speech, is to tackle inflation and, to this end, he chose not to revalorize excise duties. This was reinforced by a reduction in national insurance contributions, which not only benefits the low paid in relative terms, but also sharpens the incentive to supply labour at the bottom end of the wage spectrum. But this reform of national insurance is not cheap. Even though it is not practicable to implement the changes until October, the cost in 1989–90 is estimated at £1bn, rising to £2.8bn in 1990–1. This is equivalent, in PSDR terms, to a 2 per cent cut in the basic rate of income tax arid, in our post-Budget forecast, precludes further tax cuts in 1990. Unless there is an unexpectedly large rebound in personal savings, the Chancellor is likely to find himself in his present position in a year's time: presiding over a large budget surplus but unable to reduce it significantly for fear of rekindling inflation or aggravating the current account deficit. Simply writing declining numbers for the PSDR into the MTFS offers no genuine guidance on medium-term fiscal policy and may even be positively misleading to financial markets.     

Are intellectual property rights unfair?

If redistribution is distortionary, and if the income of skilled workers is due to knowledge-intensive activities and depends positively on intellectual property, a social planner which cares about income distribution may in principle want to use a reduction in intellectual property rights (IPRs) rather than redistributive transfers. On the one hand, such a reduction reduces static inefficiency. On the other hand, standard redistribution also reduces the level of R and D because it distorts occupational choice. We study this possibility in the context of a model with horizontal innovation, where the government, in addition to taxes and transfers, controls the fraction of innovations that are granted patents. The model predicts that standard redistribution always dominates limitations to IPRs.     

Intertemporal Commitment Problems and Voting on Redistributive Taxation

A rich person who fears a loss of income may later favor redistributive taxation and a mix of taxes and public goods that differs from the one he now favors. If mobility is costly, and if government in each period uses majority voting to determine policy, then this person may prefer to live in a community that is permanently ruled by poor residents. Majority voting is a mechanism that can overcome intertemporal commitment problems of income insurance.