在深化结构性减税中推动税制改革

近年来,党中央、国务院决定推行结构性减税的税收政策,从个人所得税的起征点提高,到营业税改增值税试点改革等税收政策,我国在减税政策上采取了实际行动。减税在理论上能刺激投资和消费,促进经济的增长,因而,减税逐渐成为了世界各国刺激经济的措施。实际上,我国实施结构性减税不仅是应对金融危机的临时之举,从长远来看,如何深化结构性减税成为我国当今税收改革的方向,也是增强群众幸福感的一个重要举措。     

Public Policy and Youth Smokeless Tobacco Use

Much is known about the effects of prices and tobacco control policies on cigarette smoking, but little is known about their impact on smokeless tobacco use. This paper uses data from the Monitoring the Future Surveys, augmented with tobacco tax and policy-related measures, to estimate smokeless tobacco demand equations for young males. The estimates indicate that higher smokeless tobacco taxes would significantly reduce the number of young men using smokeless tobacco and the frequency of smokeless tobacco use. In addition, the estimates imply that strong limits on youth access to tobacco products reduce smokeless tobacco use by young males.     

Who Are the Potential Smokers of Smuggled Cigarettes?

Although smuggled cigarettes have been a prevalent problem and a severe challenge to public health and welfare around the world, little is known about the behavior associated with smoking smuggled cigarettes and the issue is difficult to study due to data limitations. By means of a population‐based tobacco survey conducted in Taiwan, the present paper applies a latent class model to identify potential smokers who are either currently or will at some point in the future be consuming smuggled cigarettes. This methodology, in contrast to the traditional discrete models, allows potential smokers who are more inclined to smoke smuggled cigarettes to be endogenously classified. The empirical results indicate that socio‐demographic factors do increase the inclination to smoke smuggled cigarettes after unobserved heterogeneity has been accounted for.     

Mind the gap��German motherhood risks in figures and game theory issues

After childbirth, while parents are delighted at public cash transfers like the German ‘Elterngeld’ (parental leave benefit), the decline in mothers’ earnings capacity is an awkward issue that tends to hover in the background. This paper aims firstly to make a contribution to quantifying West German mothers’ foregone gross earnings that stem from intermittent labor market participation, due to the birth of their first child. Secondly, it discusses behavioral outcomes of the resulting implicit child costs in a dynamic bargaining model of household decisions. The regression results of a Mincer-type wage equation, with German Socio-Economic Panel Data (West) for the period 1984–2005 and correcting for sample selection (Two-step Heckman), indicate considerable wage penalties due to birth-related employment withdrawal. On the closure of the fecund window, mothers suffer gross hourly wage cuts of up to 25%, compared to their equally educated, non-stop full-time employed counterparts, and the total of annualized losses amounts to as much as 201,000 Euros. Although foregone earnings do not matter as much in stable partnerships, they turn out to be a veritable asymmetric specialization risk that can prevent women from having children, if divorce seems sufficiently probable.     

股利所得税差别化征收的市场效应研究——基于金融市场税收运行机制视角

财政部、国家税务总局、证监会于2012年11月16日颁布了《关于实施上市公司股息红利差别化个人所得税政策有关问题的通知》,此次税收调整的目的是通过有针对性的税收优惠政策进行结构性减税,确保资金的合理配置和股票市场的正常运行。通过事件研究法,从金融市场税收运行视角分析发现,此次股利所得税调整对过去一年发放股利的公司具有正向影响并且该影响具有时效性,同时由于持有过去一年股利发放公司股票的投资者大多属于长线投资者,此次税改对该类投资者而言是一种实质上的减税,因此本次税改在短期内产生了显著的微观经济效应,达到了政策设计的初衷,为大盘蓝筹股的价值提升了市场地位,为公司的直接融资提供了市场基础。     

Taxes and the Financial Structure of German Inward FDI

The paper analyses the financial structure of German inward FDI. Intra-company loans granted by the parent should be all the more strongly preferred over equity the lower the tax rate of the parent and the higher the tax rate of the German affiliate. We find that the corporate tax rate of the foreign parent has no significant impact on the financial structure of a German subsidiary. However, among subsidiaries that are directly held by a foreign investor those firms that on average are profitable react more strongly to changes in the German corporate tax rate than this is the case for less profitable firms. This gives support to the frequent concern that high German taxes are partly responsible for the high levels of intra-company loans. Taxation, however, does not fully explain the high levels of intra-company borrowing. Roughly 60 per cent of the cross-border intra-company loans turn out to be held by firms that are running losses. JEL no. F23, H25     

INDUSTRY RESPONSES TO THE TOBACCO EXCISE TAX INCREASES IN SOUTH AFRICA

The cigarette manufacturing market in South Africa is highly concentrated, with one company controlling more than 90 per cent of the market. In this paper the retail price of cigarettes is divided into three components: excise tax, sales tax and industry price. After decreasing during the 1970s and 1980s, the real industry price increased substantially during the 1990s. This coincided with sharp increases in the excise tax. The amplified increase in the real retail price of cigarettes decreased aggregate cigarette consumption by about a third. Despite this sharp decline, the cigarette industry substantially enhanced its revenues during the 1990s. However, since 2000 real industry price increases have been comparatively modest.     

Automatic stabilizers in the Japanese tax system

When studying the role of taxes as an automatic stabilizer, excluding the effects of discretionary tax reform is troublesome. A fruitful approach to identifying tax movements over business cycles would be to utilize cyclical information. From this perspective, we exploit wavelets in order to characterize the automatic response of taxes to output at business cycle frequencies in the postwar Japanese economy. We find the presence of automatic stabilizers in the Japanese tax system under the influence of relatively high output volatility but the absence of such stabilizers during the period of the “Great Moderation” in Japan in the 1980s.     

Tax and Spend,or Spend and Tax? An Inquiry into the Turkish Budgetary Process

For resolving the budget deficit problem, some economists have advocated spending cuts, while others support either tax increases or tax cuts. This paper investigates the interrelationship between the two fiscal variables for Turkey using bivariate and multivariate cointegrating models. The Engle-Granger and Johansen tests consistently support the existence of one nonzero cointegrating vector representing a stable long-run relationship between government spending and revenues in Turkey. Furthermore, the multivariate error-correction model suggests that taxes unidirectionally Granger-cause negative changes in spending in accordance with the Buchanan-Wagner hypothesis. Thus, from the perspective of policy making and the deficit solution debate, raising taxes in Turkey is perhaps the optimal solution to the current budget deficit predicament.     

The need for economic policy coordination between Europe,Japan, and the United States: Policy recommendations for the 1990s

Better policy coordination between Europe, Japan, and the United States is urgently needed in order to restore economic growth and to diminish mutual trade imbalances. Using the EC Compact model it is shown how coordinated fiscal policies can contribute to reaching these goals in the 1990s. For Europe, the most plausible fiscal policy option seems to be a combination of lower direct taxes, public spending cuts, and wage moderation; for Japan a more expansionary fiscal policy is feasible. For the United States, however, public spending cuts or tax increases are necessary conditions for better economic performance. In addition, for all three blocks a swap between tax reduction and wage moderation is recommended.     

税率变动对财政收入的影响——基于中国经验的实证研究

对于税率与财政收入研究是现在经济学界的一大热点问题。其主要是由于近年来,减税风波几乎卷席全球。在美国次贷危机的影响下,越来越多的国家正在蕴量或已经宣布减税。作者通过对中国、美国、中国台湾地区的税率与财政收入的实证研究,发现了一条包括阿瑟.拉弗(1974)曲线的M曲线。对于这条曲的发现,为大多数国家的调整税率,提供了一个新的思路。     

The Distributional Effects of the Trump and Clinton Tax Proposals

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the Democratic and Republican candidates for President of the U.S. in 2016, proposed several changes in the federal tax code. Hillary Clinton would add a personal income tax surcharge of 4% on high annual incomes, limit the tax benefits of non-charitable deductions, set a minimum tax rate of 30% on taxpayers earning more than one million dollars a year, increase the tax rates on capital gains for taxpayers in the top tax bracket, and expand the base of the estate tax. Donald Trump would reduce the number of personal income tax rates, increase the standard personal deduction, cut all taxes on business income to no more than 15%, and abolish the inheritance tax. Using a tax calculator model, we estimate the static effects of these very different changes. Over a ten-year period, Clinton’s proposals would raise federal tax revenue by a total of $816 billion, an increase of 1.9% over projected baseline revenue, while Trump’s tax changes would lower tax revenue by $9.8 trillion. Clinton’s higher taxes would reduce incomes and revenue somewhat, while Trump’s tax cuts would potentially boost output substantially. Using an extended simulation model, we find that 86% of the incremental tax burden of Clinton’s tax increases would fall on those in the top tenth of the income distribution. Most other taxpayers would see only minor changes in their tax burdens, and the revenue and redistributive effects of her proposed changes are relatively modest. Meanwhile, 70% of Trump’s tax cuts would go to those in the top decile, and the effects are large, with gains of over $15,000 annually per person for this group, compared to gains of less than $500 per person for the poorest 40% of the population. On tax policy, the two candidates propose strikingly different policies.     

Estimating the Corrective Tax for Goods whose Consumption Affects the Consumer’s Health

Taxing goods whose consumption has an adverse impact on the consumer’s health appears to be gaining support. But the social benefit from taxes on these goods is debatable. This paper considers what the corrective tax on such a good is and applies this theory to one good whose health effects are well established. More specifically, we produce a formula for computing the corrective tax on a good whose consumption may adversely affect the health of the consumer, and then use this formula to calculate the corrective tax for one such good, cigarettes.     

世界经济新格局与中国经济长期增长前景

中国各行业企业资本边际收益率普遍下降,意味着中国宏观经济增速下行已成为必然趋势。实际上,这标志着中国在完成基本工业化后开始从高速增长阶段进入中低速增长阶段,这也是国际发达经济体和东亚新兴经济体都遵循的发展规律。面对经济增长的趋势性变化,货币政策对经济增长的刺激作用是非常有限的,大量超发货币只会加剧信贷泡沫、增加企业尝债能力的系统性风险。当前经济的核心问题在于宏观税赋过高和企业盈利能力不足,因此,最重要的财政政策应该是实施总量减税而不仅是结构性减税,尤其是对中小企业减税减赋,才能增加就业,提高居民消费比例,转变经济增长方式。     

The Declining Contribution of Socioeconomic Disparities to the Racial Gap in Infant Mortality Rates, 1920-1970

This article examines the racial gap in infant mortality rates from 1920 to 1970. Using state-level panel data with information on income, urbanization, women's education, and physicians per capita, we can account for a large portion of the racial gap in infant mortality rates between 1920 and 1945. The educational gap between white and nonwhite women was especially important in this regard. In the postwar period, socioeconomic characteristics account for a declining portion of the racial infant mortality gap. We discuss the postwar experience in light of trends in birth weight, maternal characteristics, smoking and breast-feeding behavior, air pollution, and insurance coverage.     

Inheritance taxation in Sweden, 1885–2004: the role of ideology,family firms,and tax avoidance

This article studies the evolution of Swedish inheritance taxation since the late nineteenth century to its abolition in 2004. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, the annual effective inheritance tax rates are computed for different sizes of bequests and asset types, accounting for all relevant exemptions, deductions, and valuation discounts. Second, an attempt is made to explain changes in inheritance taxation over time. Ideology appears to be the main driver of the sharp tax increases of the 1930s to the 1960s. Wartime economies with higher pressures on the people induced politicians to raise inheritance taxes on the wealthy, primarily during the First World War. Increased opportunities for tax planning for the wealthy are also documented, most notably a series of tax cuts on inherited family firms in the 1970s. This rise in avoidance opportunities for the rich, while middle‐class heirs faced growing inheritance tax rates, undermined the legitimacy of the tax and led to its repeal.     

EVALUATING TAX REFORMS IN THE PRESENCE OF EXTERNALITIES

According to the double-dividend hypothesis, revenue-neutralgreen tax reforms are expected both to improve the quality ofthe environment and to reduce the existing tax distortions.This paper develops welfare measures which are used to estimatethese dividends separately. It is shown that the existing taxsystem and the choice of the tax rate cuts which accompany anincrease in green taxes have considerable impact on the magnitudeof the environmental dividend. Even a negative impact cannotbe ruled out. Furthermore, the welfare measures allow us toanalyse the trade-off between the two dividends and to identifywelfare-improving tax reforms.     

The Franco‐German trade puzzle: an analysis of the economic consequences of the Franco‐Prussian war1

When the Franco‐German trade relationship is viewed from a long‐term perspective, the conventional view that trade ties were rather good before 1914 becomes doubtful. In fact, trade statistics point to the absolute and relative decline in trade flows between the two countries after the Franco‐Prussian war of 1870–1. This postwar episode of Franco‐German trade history is far from incidental. On the basis of a comprehensive study of Franco‐German trade by product, this article reveals a complete restructuring of French trade with Germany after the conflict and invites a new analysis of its economic consequences.     

Tax rate,government revenue and economic performance: A perspective of Laffer curve

The Laffer curve illustrates a theoretical relationship between rates of taxation and the resulting levels of government revenue. This paper explores the relationship between tax rate (direct tax on labor income), government revenue and economic performance in a perspective of the Laffer curve by applying Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model. The results show that the top of China's Laffer curve is about 40%. The government should consider changes in the entire taxation system and not just changes in direct taxes while increasing direct tax rate. If China wants to maximize tax revenues, the direct tax rate should be 35%. We conduct a variety of sensitivity analyses and conclude that the government tax peak is always 5–10% earlier than the apex of the Laffer curve. So, if a country has reached the top of the Laffer curve, this paper strongly recommends that tax cuts will have positive implications for the economy and government revenue.     

减税降费有助于缩小中国家庭经济不平等吗——来自2011年个税改革的证据

共同富裕要求我们从多维视角审视物质层面的不平等，在当前减税降费的大背景下，个人所得税是调控收入分配的关键手段。文章从收入、消费和财产所构成的多维经济不平等视角出发，对2011年个人所得税改革调节家庭经济不平等的效应进行了探讨。研究发现：个人所得税改革的公平效应是显著的，使经济不平等程度下降了13.64%，其中对城市地区的调节效应更强，对低福利阶层和高福利阶层的影响相对显著。在作用机制方面，个人所得税改革主要影响收入不平等，并进一步作用于消费不平等和财产不平等，最终影响经济不平等。为充分发挥个人所得税的调节效应，应逐步提高个人所得税比重，补充和细化专项附加扣除项目与标准，逐步以家庭为基础征收个税。