Fiscal problems
The Permanent Effects of Fiscal Consolidations
Antonio Fatás & Lawrence Summers
NBER Working Paper, June 2016
Abstract:
The global financial crisis has permanently lowered the path of GDP in all advanced economies. At the same time, and in response to rising government debt levels, many of these countries have been engaging in fiscal consolidations that have had a negative impact on growth rates. We empirically explore the connections between these two facts by extending to longer horizons the methodology of Blanchard and Leigh (2013) regarding fiscal policy multipliers. Our results provide support for the presence of strong hysteresis effects of fiscal policy. The large size of the effects points in the direction of self-defeating fiscal consolidations as suggested by DeLong and Summers (2012). Attempts to reduce debt via fiscal consolidations have very likely resulted in a higher debt to GDP ratio through their long-term negative impact on output.
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A Contagious Malady? Open Economy Dimensions of Secular Stagnation
Gauti Eggertsson et al.
NBER Working Paper, June 2016
Abstract:
Conditions of secular stagnation - low interest rates, below target inflation, and sluggish output growth - characterize much of the global economy. We consider an overlapping generations, open economy model of secular stagnation, and examine the effect of capital flows on the transmission of stagnation. In a world with a low natural rate of interest, greater capital integration transmits recessions across countries as opposed to lower interest rates. In a global secular stagnation, expansionary fiscal policy carries positive spillovers implying gains from coordination, and fiscal policy is self-financing. Expansionary monetary policy, by contrast, is beggar-thy-neighbor with output gains in one country coming at the expense of the other. Similarly, we find that competitiveness policies including structural labor market reforms or neomercantilist trade policies are also beggar-thy-neighbor in a global secular stagnation.
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Millionaire Migration and Taxation of the Elite: Evidence from Administrative Data
Cristobal Young et al.
American Sociological Review, June 2016, Pages 421-446
Abstract:
A growing number of U.S. states have adopted “millionaire taxes” on top income-earners. This increases the progressivity of state tax systems, but it raises concerns about tax flight: elites migrating from high-tax to low-tax states, draining state revenues, and undermining redistributive social policies. Are top income-earners “transitory millionaires” searching for lower-tax places to live? Or are they “embedded elites” who are reluctant to migrate away from places where they have been highly successful? This question is central to understanding the social consequences of progressive taxation. We draw on administrative tax returns for all million-dollar income-earners in the United States over 13 years, tracking the states from which millionaires file their taxes. Our dataset contains 45 million tax records and provides census-scale panel data on top income-earners. We advance two core analyses: (1) state-to-state migration of millionaires over the long-term, and (2) a sharply-focused discontinuity analysis of millionaire population along state borders. We find that millionaire tax flight is occurring, but only at the margins of statistical and socioeconomic significance.
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Douglas Elmendorf
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall 2015, Pages 91-149
Abstract:
Official estimates of the budgetary effects of legislative proposals generally include anticipated behavioral responses except for those that would alter overall output or employment. Based on my experience as director of the Congressional Budget Office and on the analysis in this paper, I conclude that such macroeconomic effects of legislative proposals should be included in budget estimates — that is, so-called dynamic scoring should be used — for major (but not minor) proposals and for proposals affecting federal spending as well as revenues. However, such macroeconomic effects should not be included when the estimating agencies do not have the tools or time needed to do a careful analysis of those effects. Current rules governing the official estimating process do not fully meet those conditions.
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Searching for a Tolerable Tax: Public Attitudes toward Roadway Financing Alternatives
Denvil Duncan et al.
Public Finance Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
A growing number of states are pursuing strategies to combat declining fuel tax revenue and fund road construction and maintenance, including the use of sales taxes, income taxes, and tolls; raising fuel tax rates; and adopting road mileage user fees. We use data from a nationally representative survey to compare public acceptability of a mileage user fee with each of these alternative revenue mechanisms. We find that support for the revenue options varies from 13.4 percent for income taxes to 33.8 percent for tolls, with higher gasoline tax rates, mileage user fees, and sales taxes in the middle. The evidence also points to stronger intensity of opposition than intensity of support across all alternatives. Finally, we find that, conditional on opposition to the mileage user fee, public acceptability is highest for tolls, followed by higher fuel taxes, sales taxes, and income taxes. Policy implications are discussed.
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Taxes and leverage at multinational corporations
Michael Faulkender & Jason Smith
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Empirical research has struggled to show that variation in corporate capital structure arises from variation in estimated corporate income tax rates. We argue that, in previous studies, both the tax rates applied to multinational corporations and the taxable income earned have been mismeasured. Using the Bureau of Economic Analysis annual survey sample combined with each firm's income and country specific tax rate, we find that firms do have higher leverage ratios and lower interest coverage ratios when they operate in countries with higher tax rates, as theory would suggest. The trade-off theory of capital structure continues to have empirical support.
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The Domino Effects of Federal Research Funding
Lauren Lanahan, Alexandra Graddy-Reed & Maryann Feldman
PLoS ONE, June 2016
Abstract:
The extent to which federal investment in research crowds out or decreases incentives for investment from other funding sources remains an open question. Scholarship on research funding has focused on the relationship between federal and industry or, more comprehensively, non-federal funding without disentangling the other sources of research support that include nonprofit organizations and state and local governments. This paper extends our understanding of academic research support by considering the relationships between federal and non-federal funding sources provided by the National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development Survey. We examine whether federal research investment serves as a complement or substitute for state and local government, nonprofit, and industry research investment using the population of research-active academic science fields at U.S. doctoral granting institutions. We use a system of two equations that instruments with prior levels of both federal and non-federal funding sources and accounts for time-invariant academic institution-field effects through first differencing. We estimate that a 1% increase in federal research funding is associated with a 0.411% increase in nonprofit research funding, a 0.217% increase in state and local research funding, and a 0.468% increase in industry research funding, respectively. Results indicate that federal funding plays a fundamental role in inducing complementary investments from other funding sources, with impacts varying across academic division, research capacity, and institutional control.
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The Impact of Education Earmarking on State-Level Lottery Sales
Carol Stivender et al.
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research argues that lottery consumers consider how funds are to be used in making lottery purchase decisions. Possible explanations for this behavior include altruism as well as the desire of low-income families to provide educational opportunities within their community. This paper uses a panel of lottery sales for U.S. states covering the period 1980–2000 to test hypotheses regarding the impact of educational earmarking on lottery purchases. Our estimates suggest that states earmarking all or part of their revenue to education experience an increase in lottery sales between 11 % and 25 %, depending on the specification of state trends. Whether the propensity for earmarking to increase sales is viewed positively or negatively depends largely on one’s ethical and moral views of lotteries.
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Carlos Carpio & Olga Isengildina-Massa
Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, June 2016, Pages 239-259
Abstract:
The main objective of this study was to analyze the effect of advertising on social welfare in a perfectly competitive market where the level of advertising is chosen by a social planner. The theoretical model revealed that social planner-sponsored advertising that increases the equilibrium price of the advertised good can increase society's welfare if the effect of advertising in consumers' utility is higher than the consumer welfare-reducing price effect. The empirical illustration focuses on the U.S. state of South Carolina's “buy local” food products campaign. The findings suggest that this government-sponsored advertising campaign increases total welfare.
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Laura Kawano & Joel Slemrod
International Tax and Public Finance, June 2016, Pages 401-433
Abstract:
We construct a new database of extensive margin changes to multiple aspects of corporate tax bases for OECD countries between 1980 and 2004. We use our data to systematically document the tendency of countries to implement policies that both lower the corporate tax rate and broaden the corporate tax base. This correlation informs our interpretation of previous estimates of the relationship between corporate tax rates and corporate tax revenues, which typically do not include comprehensive measures of the corporate tax base definition. We then re-examine the relationship between corporate tax rates and corporate tax revenues. We find that accounting for unobserved heterogeneity attenuates the relationship between corporate tax rates and corporate tax revenues, and increases the implied revenue-maximizing tax rate. Controlling for our new tax base measures does not substantively impact the magnitude of this relationship.
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Measuring Consumer Responses to a Bottled Water Tax Policy
Peter Berck et al.
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using panel data of retail purchases, we measure the effects of the introduction, and later removal, of a bottled-water tax in the state of Washington. We use a difference-in-differences approach to measure effects of the tax against untreated stores (in comparable control states) and untreated weeks (the pre-period). We further estimate triple-difference specifications comparing bottled water to juice and milk substitute products. Our results show that, when imposed, the tax causes bottled water sales to drop by nearly 6% in our preferred specification. Sales never fully recover, even after the tax removal. In terms of the heterogeneity of this effect, we find larger quantity drops in high tax rate areas and in the lowest and highest quintile income areas.
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Behavioral Interventions to Increase Tax-Time Saving: Evidence from a National Randomized Trial
Michal Grinstein-Weiss et al.
Journal of Consumer Affairs, forthcoming
Abstract:
We provide new large-scale experimental evidence on policies that aim to boost household saving out of income tax refunds. Households that filed income tax returns with an online tax preparer and chose to receive their refund electronically were randomized into eight treatment groups, which received different combinations of motivational saving prompts and suggested shares of the refund to save — 25% and 75% — and a control group, which received neither. In treatment conditions where they were presented, motivational prompts focused on various savings goals: general, retirement, or emergency. Analysis reveals that higher suggested allocations generated increased allocations of the refund to savings but that prompts for different reasons to save did not. These interventions, which draw on lessons from behavioral economics, represent potentially low-cost, scalable tools for policy makers interested in helping low- and moderate-income households build savings.