A TALE OF TAX POLICIES IN OPEN ECONOMIES

To evaluate fiscal policy reforms for Euro‐area countries, this article develops and calibrates a small open economy model. Debt reduction reforms require higher tax rates in the short term in exchange for lower rates in the long term as the debt‐servicing burden falls. Using the capital income tax to implement such a policy leads to welfare gains; the consumption tax, a very small welfare gain; and the labor income tax, a welfare loss. Holding fixed the long‐run debt–output ratio, offsetting a lower capital income tax with either a higher labor income or consumption tax generally yields welfare gains.     

On the welfare implications of nominal GDP targeting

This paper examines the welfare implications of a nominal GDP growth targeting rule, a nominal GDP level targeting rule, and inflation targeting regime in a New Keynesian model featuring positive trend inflation, two measures of welfare, and both high and low growth environments. The paper finds that (i) in general, nominal GDP growth targeting dominates other rules with changes in all dimensions; (ii) nominal GDP growth targeting framework is superior to the level targeting regime for most scenarios; (iii) inflation targeting is preferred to nominal GDP level targeting regime, but to minimize short-run fluctuations, the latter is advantageous; (iv) nominal GDP level targeting may be desirable only in a low growth environment with both low inflation indexation and consumption equivalence criteria. The simulation results provide solid evidence to policy makers on the desirability of nominal GDP growth targeting.     

Macroeconomic impacts of fiscal policy shocks in the UK: A DSGE analysis

This paper develops and estimates a new-Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for the analysis of fiscal policy in the UK. We find that government consumption and investment yield the highest GDP multipliers in the short-run, whereas capital income tax and public investment have dominating effect on GDP in the long-run. When nominal interest rate is at the zero lower bound, consumption taxes and public consumption and investment are found to be the most effective fiscal instruments throughout the analysed horizon, and capital and labour income taxes are established to be the least effective. The paper also shows that the effectiveness of fiscal policy decreases in a small open-economy scenario and that nominal rigidities improve effectiveness of public spending and consumption taxes, whereas decrease that of income taxes.     

Fiscal efficiency,redistribution and welfare

The expanding literature on fiscal decentralization (FD) emphasizes the role of institutional mechanisms for FD's welfare effects. We analyze the welfare effects of FD in case of a fiscal transfer mechanism that punishes inefficiency in tax collection and compensates for local income deficiency. In addition, a portion of transfers is earmarked for investment. Given a level of FD and these rules, the representative local government chooses its tax collection effort to maximize local utility. The solution of the model reveals that the stricter the redistributive rule, the higher are steady-state fiscal efficiency and welfare. While the effectiveness of the redistributive parameters increases with centralization of the revenue pool, it decreases with the tax rate. Both welfare and income distribution, on the other hand, improve with the degree of revenue centralization and the tax rate. Besides, fiscal efficiency and redistribution decrease with investment-earmarked transfers.     

Fiscal rules in a monetary economy: Implications for growth and welfare

This study considers two fiscal rules, a debt rule that controls the debt‐to‐gross domestic product (GDP) ratio, and an expenditure rule that controls the expenditure‐to‐GDP ratio, in a monetary growth model with financial intermediation. Tightening of fiscal rules promotes economic growth and thus, benefits future generations. However, there could be two equilibria of the nominal interest rates, and the welfare effects of the rules on the current generation are different between the two equilibria. In particular, the effects of a decreased debt‐to‐GDP ratio depend on its initial ratio; a high (low)‐ratio country has no incentive (an incentive) to reduce the ratio further from the viewpoint of the current generation's welfare. This result provides an explanation for difficulties with fiscal reform in countries with already high debt‐to‐GDP ratios.     

Jointly optimal monetary and fiscal policy rules under liquidity constraints

We study the welfare properties of an economy where both monetary and fiscal policies follow simple rules, and where a subset of agents is liquidity constrained. The welfare benefits of optimizing the fiscal rule are far larger than those of optimizing the monetary rule. The optimized fiscal rule implements strong automatic stabilizers that primarily stabilize the income of liquidity-constrained agents, rather than output. Transfers targeted to liquidity-constrained agents are the preferred fiscal instrument. The optimized monetary rule exhibits super-inertia and a weak inflation response. Optimized simple rules perform as well as the optimal policy under the timeless perspective.     

Fiscal rules and the intergenerational welfare effects of public investment

A common argument against balanced-budget fiscal rules has it that the costs of durable public capital fall entirely on current generations while its benefits also accrue to future generations. This paper proposes an additional argument whereby balanced-budget rules imply uneven welfare effects of public investment across generations. Using an overlapping generations model of a small open economy, I show that, when subject to a balanced-budget constraint, public investment causes a negative financial wealth effect on current generations. Numerical simulations of the model show that, in terms of welfare, this negative financial wealth effect more than offsets the productivity gains of higher public investment spending, leaving current generations worse-off. A golden rule exempting net public investment from the balanced-budget requirement overturns this effect and allows for welfare gains to both current and future generations. Allowing for debt-financing may thus be necessary to ensure public support for efficient increases in public investment spending.     

Government size and macroeconomic stability: A comment

We show that in a standard, technology shock-driven one-sector real business cycle model, the stabilization effects of government fiscal policy depend crucially on how labor hours enter the household's period utility function and the associated labor-market behavior. In particular, as Galí [European Economic Review 38 (1994), 117-132] has shown, when the household utility is logarithmic in both consumption and leisure, income taxes are destabilizing and government purchases are stabilizing. However, the results are reversed when preferences are instead convex in hours worked. That is, income taxes are now stabilizing and public spending is destabilizing. Furthermore, under both preference specifications, the magnitude of cyclical fluctuations in output remains unchanged when the income tax rate and the share of government purchases in GDP are equal (including laissez-faire).     

Budgetary policies in a DSGE model with finite horizons

This paper presents a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities, capital accumulation and finite horizons. Our New Keynesian framework exhibits intergenerational wealth effects and is intended to investigate the macroeconomic implications of fiscal policy, which is specified by either a debt-based tax rule or a balanced-budget rule allowing for temporary deficits. The model predicts that fiscal expansions generate a trade-off in output dynamics between short-term gains and medium-term losses. It is shown that the effects of fiscal shocks crucially depend upon the conduct of monetary policy. Simulation analysis suggests that balanced-budget requirements enhance the determinacy properties of feedback interest rate rules by guaranteeing inflation stabilization.     

How much to share: Welfare effects of fiscal transfers

Recent sovereign debt crisis has challenged policy makers to explore the possibility of establishing a fiscal transfer system that could alleviate the negative impact of asymmetric shocks across countries. Using a simple labour production economy, we first derive an analytically tractable solution for optimal degree of fiscal transfers. In this economy, fiscal transfers can improve welfare by moving the competitive equilibrium with fiscal transfers closer to the social planner's solution. We then extend the model to a DSGE setting with capital, international bond and linear taxes, and we analyze how implementation of a simple revenue sharing rule affects welfare and macroeconomic variables over time. Simulation results show that risk sharing through fiscal transfers always improves welfare in the long run. However, under certain model specifications, short‐run transitional welfare loss can outweigh the long‐run benefits. These results suggest that, in designing fiscal transfers across countries, government should take into consideration the intertemporal nature of welfare gains.     

Debt Policy Rules in an Open Economy

In a small open economy model of endogenous growth with public capital accumulation, we examine the effects of a debt policy rule under which the government must reduce its debt–GDP ratio if it exceeds the criterion level. To sustain public debt at a finite level, the government should adjust public spending rather than the income tax rate. The long‐run debt–GDP ratio should be kept sufficiently low to avoid equilibrium indeterminacy. Under sustainability and determinacy, a tighter (looser) debt rule brings welfare gains when the world interest rate is relatively high (low).     

The unbearable tightness of being in a monetary union: Fiscal restrictions and regional stability

We study how constrained fiscal policy can affect macroeconomic stability and welfare in a two-region model of a monetary union with sticky prices and distortionary taxation. Both government spending and taxes can be used to stabilize regional variables; however, the best welfare outcome is obtained under some tax variability and constant regional inflations. We use a variety of rules to characterize constrained fiscal policy and find that strict fiscal rules coupled with a monetary policy that targets union-wide inflation result in regional inflation stability and the welfare costs of such rules are not as unbearable as one would expect. Fiscal authorities can enhance welfare by targeting the regional output gap, while targeting regional inflation is less successful since inflation stability is guaranteed by the central bank.     

Economy as Instituted Process: Change,Transformation, and Progress

During the past two decades, chronic fiscal deficits have led to elevated and rising ratios of government debt to nominal GDP in Japan. Nevertheless, long-term Japanese government bonds' (JGBs) nominal yields initially declined, and have since stayed remarkably low and stable. This is contrary to the received wisdom which holds that higher government deficits and indebtedness will exert upward pressures on nominal yields. This paper examines the relationship between JGBs' nominal yields and short-term interest rates, as well as other factors, such as low inflation, persistent deflationary pressures, and tepid growth. We also argue that Japan has monetary sovereignty, which gives the Japanese government the ability to service its debt, and enables the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to keep JGBs' nominal yields low by ensuring that short-term interest rates are low, and by using various other tools of monetary policy. The argument that short-term interest rates and monetary policy are the primarily drivers of long-term interest rates follows John Maynard Keynes's (1930) insights.     

Schumpeterian Growth with Productive Public Spending and Distortionary Taxation

Schumpeterian growth theory eliminates the scale effect by positing a process of development of new product lines that fragments the aggregate market in submarkets whose size does not increase with population or the size of the workforce. This entails the sterilization of the growth effects of selected fiscal variables. This insight is applied to shed new light on the role of distortionary taxes on consumption, household labor and assets income, corporate income, and of productive public spending. The framework allows the identification of which of these fiscal variables have permanent (steady‐state) growth effects, and which ones have only transitory effects. It also allows the transitional dynamics to be solved analytically and thus the analysis of the welfare effects of revenue‐neutral changes in tax structure. It is found that replacing taxes that distort labor supply with taxes that distort saving/investment choices raises welfare, and the intuition behind this surprising result is discussed.     

Investment scaling up and the role of government

This article studies the fiscal and welfare implications of a scaling up of public investment when the government is subject to inefficiencies on the spending and on the tax collection side. In our simulations, the scaling up of public investments results in higher long-run output and consumption levels but requires a fiscal stabilization package in order to preserve fiscal sustainability. The effects on consumers’ welfare after the fiscal adjustment are nontrivial. Our welfare analysis shows that consumers’ welfare is increased when the government smooths the fiscal adjustment via higher borrowing and not through an increase in taxation. Moreover, the comparison between several stabilization packages via tax adjustment shows that higher welfare is achieved when the government relies mostly on taxation of capital as this allows higher levels of consumption. Lower fiscal costs that do not undermine fiscal sustainability can however be achieved if the government manages to reduce inefficiency in tax collection. Finally, we consider a change in the trade regime that causes a decline in revenues. We find that the higher fiscal burden required to preserve fiscal sustainability would completely wipe out the welfare gain of higher public investments.     

Flexible fiscal rules and countercyclical fiscal policy

This paper assesses the impact of different types of flexible fiscal rules on the procyclicality of fiscal policy with propensity scores-matching techniques, thus mitigating traditional self-selection problems. It finds that not all fiscal rules have the same impact: the design matters. Specifically, investment-friendly rules reduce the procyclicality of both overall and investment spending. The effect appears stronger in bad times and when the rule is enacted at the national level. The introduction of escape clauses in fiscal rules does not seem to affect the cyclical stance of public spending. The inclusion of cyclical adjustment features in spending rules yields broadly similar results. The results are mixed for cyclically-adjusted budget balance rules: enacting the latter is associated with countercyclical movements in overall spending, but with procyclical changes in investment spending. Structural factors, such as past debt, the level of development, the volatility of terms of trade, natural resources endowment, government stability, and the legal enforcement and monitoring arrangements backing the rule also influence the link between fiscal rules and countercyclicality. The results are robust to a wide set of alternative specifications.     

The Current Account, Fiscal Policy, and Medium-Run Income Determination

This article presents a new framework for analyzing the simultaneous determination of current account imbalances and the path of national income. Using standard macroeconomic behavioral relationships, it first examines how and why current account deficits matter by investigating links between domestic consumption, government spending, output, saving, investment, interest rates, and capital flows. Central to the model is the distinction between aggregate output and expenditure that enables dissection of the effects of discretionary fiscal change on the current account and national income. The framework yields results relevant to the twin deficits hypothesis that are contrary to those of standard models. (JEL E10 , F32 )     

Borrow and Adjust: Fiscal Policy and Sectoral Adjustment in an Open Economy*

Should the government run fiscal deficits in response to an adverse external shock that warrants transfer of resources from production of nontraded to traded goods? This article considers normative fiscal policy implications of sectoral adjustment costs in a two‐sector model with overlapping generations. Fiscal deficits benefit present generations by depleting foreign assets and slowing down the adjustment process. We show that despite no nominal rigidities, temporary fiscal deficits increase social welfare if adjustment costs prevent immediate sectoral reallocation of inputs. If there are no adjustment costs, the case for fiscal deficits vanishes.     

地方政府财政支出结构影响农村居民消费的实证研究

地方政府财政支出可划分为投资性支出、消费性支出和福利性支出.通过构建适合我国农村居民消费特征的理论模型,运用1995-2009年省际面板数据,实证检验地方政府财政支出对农村居民消费的影响.结果显示:政府投资性支出和福利性支出对农村居民消费具有正向促进作用,政府消费性支出对农村居民消费则具有负向抑制作用.因此,政府应该进一步优化财政支出结构来促进农村居民消费的增长.