Taxes,the Speed of Convergence,and Implications for Welfare Effects of Fiscal Policy

Previous studies suggest that income taxes do not affect the convergence speed in neoclassical and new growth models. Those studies use very simple tax structures. This paper shows that a relation between taxes and convergence speed emerges if tax benefits are included in standard macroeconomic models. A welfare example suggests that the economic impact could be large even if the absolute size of the effect of taxes on convergence speed is small.     

取消农业税对新疆财政的影响及对策研究

从2005年起,新疆在逐步实施农业税改革的基础上正式实施取消全部农业税、牧业税和除烟叶外的农业特产税政策,这项政策的实施对减轻农民负担,提高农业竞争力等具有重要意义。但由于农业税在新疆财政中的比重较大,取消农业税将使基层政权财力不足问题更加突出。本文客观地分析了新疆财政状况,认为解决新疆财政面临的困难应寻求更多的中央转移支付,完善转移支付制度,提高新疆财政的自我造血能力。     

The Interactions between Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy

This paper studies the interactions of fiscal policy and monetarypolicy when they stabilize a single economy against shocks ina dynamic setting. If both policy-makers are benevolent, then,in our model, the best outcome is achieved when monetary policydoes nearly all of the stabilization. If the monetary authoritiesare benevolent, but the fiscal authority discounts the future,or aims for an excessive level of output, then a Nash equilibriumwill result in large welfare losses: after an inflation shockthere will be excessively tight monetary policy, excessive fiscalexpansion, and a rapid accumulation of public debt. However,if, in these circumstances, there is a regime of fiscal leadership,then the outcome will be very nearly as good as when both policy-makersare benevolent. Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: t.kirsanova{at}exeter.ac.uk; jari.stehn{at}bnc.ox.ac.uk;david.vines{at}economics.oxford.ac.uk     

财税政策支持深圳低碳经济发展的实践与思考

本文立足深圳,对财税政策在扶持低碳经济发展中的作用进行了分析,在总结和借鉴国外财税政策实践的基础上,提出了财税政策支持深圳低碳经济发展的若干建议。     

欧盟发展低碳经济的财税政策研究

欧盟在发展低碳经济过程中采取的财税政策比较完备,取得了比较大的成就.欧盟低碳财税政策包括促进乘用车减排、绿色税收、政府绿色采购、能源补贴与能效审计等内容,并在运用绿色税收、政府绿色采购等财税政策方面具有成功经验,可以为我国改革能源补贴、政府绿色采购、绿色税收等方面的财税政策提供借鉴.     

碳排放权交易政府监管的必要性与可行性分析

碳排放权交易作为一种碳减排经济刺激手段,具有双重功效。既有利于减缓气候变化,又有利于保障能源安全。然而,完全自由放任的碳排放权交易会因为市场固有的缺陷而引发金融风险,如碳排放权的社会分配不公和碳排放权交易的不完全竞争。因此,政府监管应贯穿于碳排放权交易的始终。碳排放权交易市场发育尚未成熟时,政府需要培育市场良性运行的外部条件;市场逐步成熟时,市场将取代政府起基础调节作用;市场失灵时,政府能纠正这一失灵。     

The Case for Stabilizing China＇s Exchange Rate： Setting the Stage for Fiscal Expansion

China＇s financial conundrum arises from two sources. First, its large saving （trade） surplus results in a currency mismatch because it is an immature creditor that cannot lend in its own currency. Instead, foreign currency claims （largely US dollars） build up within domestic financial institutions. Second, economists, both American and Chinese, mistakenly attribute the surpluses to an undervalued RMB. To placate the USA, the result was a gradual and predictable appreciation of the RMB against the dollar of 6 percent or more per year from July 2005 to July 2008. Together with the fall in US interest rates since mid-2007, this one- way bet in the foreign exchanges markets not only attracted hot money inflows but inhibited private capital outflows from financing China＇ s huge trade surplus. Therefore, the People＇s Bank of China had to intervene heavily to prevent the RMB from ratcheting upwards, and so became the country＇s sole international financial intermediary as official exchange reserves exploded Because of the currency mismatch, floating the RMB is neither feasible nor desirable, and a higher RMB would not reduce China＇ s trade surplus. Instead, monetary control and normal private-sector finance for the trade surplus require a return to a credibly fixed nominal RMB/USD rate similar to that which existed between 1995 and 2004. However, for any newly reset RMB/USD rate to be credible as a monetary anchor, foreign ＂China bashing＂ to get the RMB up must end. Then the stage would be set for fiscal expansion to both stimulate the economy and reduce its trade surplus.     

Fiscal Policies and Poverty Incidence: The Case of Thailand

The evidence presented in this paper suggests that moderate, once-only pro-poor fiscal reallocations may have significant effects on both poverty incidence and inequality. The paper simulates the effects of hypothetical reallocations of the total tax burden away from taxes falling heavily on the poor (indirect taxes in general) and towards those falling predominantly on the rich (direct taxes, especially the personal income tax). It performs a similar exercise for hypothetical reallocations of expenditures and for changes in the overall size of taxes and expenditures, deriving the effects that these reallocations have on both poverty incidence (headcount measure) and inequality (Gini coefficient).     

Why People Pay Taxes: The Case of the Development Levy in Tanzania

This paper examines factors determining tax compliance behavior in local authorities in Tanzania. The case study is the poll tax—locally named “development levy.” The study finds support for the hypothesis that tax compliance is positively related to factors such as ability to pay, the (perceived) probability of being prosecuted, and the number of tax evaders known personally by the respondent. Oppressive tax enforcement, harassment of taxpayers, and discontent with public service delivery seem to increase tax resistance and may explain widespread tax evasion.     

Reforming Budgetary Institutions in Latin America: The Case for a National Fiscal Council

Latin America's economies have made tremendous improvements in recent years. Following the lost decade of the 1980s, economic growth has resumed. But the fruits of this progress remain to be consolidated. The political consensus supporting reform is fragile, and the economies of the region are still susceptible to destabilizing shocks, as recent events have underscored. Even well-devised economic policy strategies can be thrown off course by disturbances. This article proposes an institutional reform—a National Fiscal Council—designed to allow Latin American countries to break out of this vicious circle.     

Fiscal-monetary Interactions: The Effect of Fiscal Restraint and Public Monitoring on Central Bank Credibility

This paper offers new insights into the interactions between private agents, the government, and a central bank, and their effect on the outcomes of monetary policy. In a simple game theoretic model we show that, unless there is public monitoring, impatient governments will be tempted to override or outmaneuver the central bank and create surprise inflation to boost output. This both undermines the government’s reputation for sound fiscal policies and reduces the central bank’s credibility. The result is not only higher and more volatile inflation but also sub-optimal output. More importantly, it is also shown that this is likely to occur even if the central banker is fully independent and the government is always patient. In contrast, if the public monitors sufficiently carefully, the central bank is never overridden and monetary policy can be credible even under an impatient government. We derive the general conditions under which each scenario occurs and then relate them to the developments in central banking over the past two decades, most notably to the trends towards greater independence, explicit inflation targeting, clearer communication and transparency. Interestingly, transparency is shown to reduce the variability of both inflation and output (by reducing the monitoring cost and making public monitoring more likely) which is in contrast to the usual transparency literature with a single policymaker which supposes a transparency-volatility trade-off.

Corporate Taxes and Financing Methods for Taxable Acquisitions*

We examine the influence of corporate taxes on U.S. firms' financing methods for taxable acquisitions of 100 percent of a target corporation's stock. We conduct tests of acquirer firms' use of debt or internal funds as the funding source for these acquisitions over the period 1987‐97. Our results provide the first empirical evidence that U.S. firms' use of debt to fund acquisitions significantly declines as foreign tax credit limitations reduce the marginal tax benefits received from borrowing. This finding is consistent with earlier speculation that U.S. foreign tax credit provisions could materially affect the capital costs of U.S. companies in debt‐financed acquisitions. We also find that these firms are generally high‐tax‐rate corporations whose financing choices are not significantly influenced by whether they acquire target‐firm tax loss carryovers. Our findings contribute to the accounting literature on the influence of taxes on the structure and financing of corporate acquisitions.     

财政分权、地方财政支出偏好与城市用地规模扩张——以长三角地区为例

摘要：文章通过利用1996-2010年长三角地区16个核心城市的面板数据,实证考察了财政分权、地方财政支出与城市用地规模扩张之间的关系。研究表明：财政务权和地方政府竞争体制使得地方政府在财政支出上存在着明显的偏向,三者均是城市用地规模扩张的主要推动因素;不同城市用地规模扩张的速度存在差异;体制因素是城市用地规模盲目扩张的深层次原因。为了从根本土改变地方政府的行为为鼓励,需立足中国实际,完善现有的财政体制,规范中央和地方的财政收支;改革现行的政绩考核体制,保持官员任期的连续性和稳定性;要深化我国的户籍制度改革,打破居民迁移的体制壁垒。实现”用脚投票”的机制．     

Second-Best Pollution Taxes and the Structure of Preferences

We characterize optimal taxes on polluting and nonpolluting goods in Ramsey and Mirrlees second-best environments. The polluting good tax differs from the Pigouvian tax by Ramsey terms in the first and by Stiglitz/Mirrlees plus another adjustment term in the second. These terms can be positive, negative, or zero. If preferences are weakly separable in public and private goods, with the private good subutility weakly separable in labor and produced goods, nonpolluting goods are taxed uniformly and the concept of a tax differential between polluting and nonpolluting goods is well defined. The differential is then less than the Pigouvian tax in the Ramsey framework, but it can be greater, equal to, or smaller than the Pigouvian tax in the Mirrlees second best. In Mirrlees second best, if preferences are separable in labor supply and other goods, the second-best tax differential is identical to the Pigouvian tax.     

Contribution Ceilings and the Incidence of Payroll Taxes

Social security contributions (SSCs) are typically formally split between employers and employees as payroll taxes, levied on earnings at a constant tax rate that applies only up to a ceiling, above which the marginal tax rate falls to a reduced rate, often 0. Such contribution ceilings create a concave kink point in the budget set of workers and hence should generate a dip in the distribution of earnings around the ceiling through labour supply responses (the reverse of bunching expected at convex kink points) but such a dip is not observed empirically. This paper sets out a new approach to infer the incidence of SSCs that exploits the absence of this dip and the fact that (mechanically) the distributions of labour cost (earnings inclusive of all payroll taxes), gross earnings (net of employer payroll taxes) and net earnings (net of both employer and employee payroll taxes) cannot all be smooth around a kink. The other papers in this special issue apply the method to data for Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK and all find that distribution of gross earnings is smooth around kinks (implying that the distributions of labour costs and net-of-tax earnings are not) even though the concept of gross earnings is irrelevant in the standard static model of labour supply and demand that dominates the public economics literature. This suggests that other features of the labour market, such as wage bargaining based on the gross earnings concept, are relevant for determining the incidence of SSCs.     

Strategic Interactions Among Central Bank and National Fiscal Authorities in a Monetary Union Subject to Asymmetric Country Shocks

In this paper we extend Nordhaus’ (Brookings Pap Econ Act (2):139–199, 1994) results to an environment which may represent the current European situation, characterised by a single monetary authority and several fiscal bodies. We show that, even assuming that the monetary and the fiscal authorities share the same ideal targets, in the presence of asymmetric shocks the “symbiosis” result found by Dixit and Lambertini (J Int Econ 60:235–247, 2003) no longer obtains. Thus, fiscal rules as those envisaged in the Maastricht Treaty and in the Stability and Growth Pact may work as monetary/fiscal coordination devices that improve welfare. The imposition of common targets, however, may work as a substitute for policy coordination only if these are made state contingent, an aspect that the recent version of the Stability and Growth Pact takes into account in a more appropriate way than its original version.

Fiscal Decentralization and Poverty Alleviation in a Transitional Economy: The Case of Viet Nam

Intergovernmental fiscal arrangements may play an important role in ameliorating poverty in many countries. Successful poverty alleviation generally requires both ‘capacity improving’ and ‘safety net’ policies, and both types of policies may, to some extent, be implemented through, or affected by, intergovernmental transfers. From this perspective, we analyse the efficacy of intergovernmental fiscal arrangements in poverty alleviation in a transitional economy, Viet Nam. We argue that both general and specific transfers are needed for this purpose: the former to enable all provinces to provide a given basket of public services at a given tax-price by offsetting their revenue and cost disabilities and the latter to ensure that minimum levels of those public services provided by lower levels of government are targeted to the poor throughout the country.