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Political Pressures on Monetary Policy during the U.S. Great Inflation
Charles Weise
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on an analysis of Federal Open Market Committee documents, this paper argues that political pressures on the Federal Reserve were an important contributor to the rise in inflation in the United States in the 1970s. Members of the FOMC understood that a serious attempt to tackle inflation would generate opposition from Congress and the Executive branch. Political considerations contributed to delays in monetary tightening, insufficiently aggressive anti-inflation policies, and the premature abandonment of attempts at disinflation. Empirical analysis verifies that references to the political environment at FOMC meetings are correlated with the stance of monetary policy during this period.
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Martin Larch
Kyklos, February 2012, Pages 53-80
Abstract:
A bias towards running deficits is an entrenched feature of fiscal policy making in most developed economies. Our paper examines whether this tendency is in any way associated with the personal distribution of income of a country. It takes inspiration from theoretical work according to which distributional conflicts may give rise to deficit spending or to delayed fiscal adjustment. Although these theories have been around for years the empirical literature on the determinants of fiscal performance has so far paid little or no attention to the possible role played by different degrees of income inequality. Our results suggest that this neglect was not justified. Using cross-country data we find evidence that a more unequal distribution of income can weigh on a country's fiscal performance. These findings can be relevant in the aftermath of the post-2007 global financial and economic crisis in particular when designing fiscal exit strategies. The success and sustainability of such strategies may inter alia depend on their distributional implications.
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Importing Corruption Culture from Overseas: Evidence from Corporate Tax Evasion in the United States
Jason DeBacker, Bradley Heim & Anh Tran
NBER Working Paper, January 2012
Abstract:
This paper studies how cultural norms and enforcement policies influence illicit corporate activities. Using confidential IRS audit data, we show that corporations with owners from countries with higher corruption norms engage in higher amounts of tax evasion in the U.S. This effect is strong for small corporations and decreases as the size of the corporation increases. In the mid-2000s, the United States implemented several enforcement measures which significantly increased tax compliance. However, we find that these enforcement efforts were less effective in reducing tax evasion by corporations whose owners are from countries with higher corruption norms. This suggests that cultural norms can be a challenge to legal enforcement.
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Desperately seeking the positive impact of undervaluation on growth
Ridha Nouira & Khalid Sekkat
Journal of Macroeconomics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper contributes to a current and intense debate among economists on whether real exchange rate undervaluation can boost growth. It focuses on addressing econometric and empirical issues that casts doubt about the validity of such positive impact. It also allows for the possibilities that the effect of undervaluation on growth operates with delay or dependent on the persistence or the level of undervaluation. We did not find any convincing support to the claim that a depreciated real exchange rate promotes economic growth. We argue that the contrast between our results and the documented examples of a successful adoption of undervaluation strategy reported in the literature reveals that undervaluation alone is not enough to boost growth. The simultaneous adoption of companion policies may be behind the claimed success.
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Fairness Spillovers - The Case of Taxation
Thomas Cornelissen, Oliver Himmler & Tobias Koenig
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is standardly assumed that individuals react to perceived unfairness or norm violations in precisely the same area or relationship where the original offense has occurred. However, grievances over being exposed to injustice may have even broader consequences and also spill over to other contexts, causing non-compliant behavior there. We present evidence that such 'fairness spillovers' can incur large economic costs: A belief that there is unfairness in taxation in the sense that the rich don't pay enough taxes is associated with a twenty percent higher level of paid absenteeism from work.
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Empirical Evidence on the Aggregate Effects of Anticipated and Unanticipated U.S. Tax Policy Shocks
Morten Ravn & Karel Mertens
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
We provide empirical evidence on the dynamics effects of tax liability changes in the United States. We distinguish between surprise and anticipated tax changes using a timing-convention. We document that pre-announced but not yet implemented tax cuts give rise to contractions in output, investment and hours worked while real wages increase. In contrast, there are no significant anticipation effects on aggregate consumption. Implemented tax cuts, regardless of their timing, have expansionary and persistent effects on output, consumption, investment, hours worked and real wages. Results are shown to be very robust. We argue that tax shocks are empirically important impulses to the U.S. business cycle and that anticipation effects have been important during several business cycle episodes.
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Earnings Determination and Taxes: Evidence From a Cohort-Based Payroll Tax Reform in Greece
Emmanuel Saez, Manos Matsaganis & Panos Tsakloglou
Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2012, Pages 493-533
Abstract:
This article analyzes the response of earnings to payroll tax rates using a cohort-based reform in Greece. Individuals who started working on or after 1993 face permanently a much higher earnings cap for payroll taxes, creating a large and permanent discontinuity in marginal payroll tax rates by date of entry in the labor force for upper earnings workers. Using full-population administrative social security data and a regression discontinuity design, we estimate the long-term labor supply effects and incidence of payroll tax rates on earnings. Standard theory predicts that in the long run, new regime workers should bear the entire burden of the payroll tax increase (relative to old regime workers). In contrast, we find that employers compensate new regime workers for the extra employer payroll taxes but not for the extra employee payroll taxes. We do not find any evidence of labor supply responses along the extensive or intensive margins around the discontinuity, suggesting low efficiency costs of payroll taxes. We discuss various possible explanations for those results.
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Expectation traps in a new Keynesian open economy model
David Arseneau
Economic Theory, January 2012, Pages 81-112
Abstract:
This paper illustrates that the presence of a money demand distortion in an otherwise standard new Keynesian open economy model results in multiple discretionary equilibria that arise in the form of expectations traps. If private sector inflation expectations become sufficiently unanchored, the model predicts that a monetary authority can easily be trapped into validating these expectations, thereby pushing the economy to a lower welfare equilibrium. Given the ease with which expectation traps arise in the presence of international linkages, the main result presented here suggests that maintaining well-anchored inflation expectations is a critically important policy goal for central banks in open economies.
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A note on America's 1920-21 depression as an argument for austerity
Daniel Kuehn
Cambridge Journal of Economics, January 2012, Pages 155-160
Abstract:
This note argues that recent interest in the 1920-21 depression in the USA as a historical precedent for austerity is inappropriate. Most of the austerity measures preceded the depression, which had already begun receding by the time Warren Harding implemented the relatively modest spending and tax cuts that are cited by modern proponents of austerity. The evidence suggests that the 1920-21 depression was the result of a variety of supply constraints, rather than a deficiency of effective demand, and is therefore a poor test of the efficacy of Keynesian fiscal policy.
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Effects of Fiscal Stimulus in Structural Models
Günter Coenen et al.
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2012, Pages 22-68
Abstract:
The paper subjects seven structural DSGE models, all used heavily by policymaking institutions, to discretionary fiscal stimulus shocks using seven different fiscal instruments, and compares the results to those of two prominent academic DSGE models. There is considerable agreement across models on both the absolute and relative sizes of different types of fiscal multipliers. The size of many multipliers is large, particularly for spending and targeted transfers. Fiscal policy is most effective if it has moderate persistence and if monetary policy is accommodative. Permanently higher spending or deficits imply significantly lower initial multipliers.
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On the optimality of age-dependent taxes and the progressive U.S. tax system
Martin Gervais
Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, forthcoming
Abstract:
In life-cycle economies, where an individual's optimal consumption-work plan is almost never constant, the optimal marginal tax rates on capital and labor income vary with age. Conversely, the progressivity imbedded in the U.S. tax code implies that marginal tax rates vary with age because tax rates vary with earnings and earnings vary with age. Using numerical simulations, this paper shows that if the tax authority is prevented from conditioning tax rates on age, some degree of progressivity is desirable as progressive taxation better imitates optimal age-dependent taxes than an optimal age-independent tax system. This role for progressive taxation emanates from efficiency reasons and does not rely on any insurance nor re-distribution arguments.
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Fiscal Policy and the Firm: Do Low Corporate Tax Rates Attract Multinational Corporations?
Nathan Jensen
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
The existing literature on the political economy of taxation explores how the mobility of firms affects the ability of governments to tax capital. In this article the author tests the relationship between corporate tax rates and multinational investment decisions in advanced, industrialized economies. He utilizes a time-series cross-sectional general error correction model to explore the impact of corporate taxation rates and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in up to 19 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development economies from 1980 to 2000. To mitigate potential endogeneity problems, the author's identification strategy takes advantage of delays between the passage of tax reductions and the implementation of these policies. The author finds no relationship between corporate tax rates and flows of foreign direct investment. This finding has implications on the link between globalization and domestic politics.
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Do Agglomeration Economies Reduce the Sensitivity of Firm Location to Tax Differentials?
Marius Brülhart, Mario Jametti & Kurt Schmidheiny
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent theoretical work in economic geography has shown that agglomeration forces can mitigate ‘race-to-the-bottom' tax competition, by partly or fully offsetting firms' sensitivity to tax differentials. We test this proposition using data on firm births across Swiss municipalities. We find that corporate taxes deter firm births less in more spatially concentrated sectors. Firms in sectors with an agglomeration intensity in the top quintile are less than half as responsive to differences in corporate tax burdens as firms in sectors with an agglomeration intensity in the bottom quintile. Hence, agglomeration economies do appear to attenuate the impact of tax differentials on firms' location choices.
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Identification of Preferences and Evaluation of Income Tax Policy
Charles Manski
NBER Working Paper, January 2012
Abstract:
The merits of alternative income tax policies depend on the population distribution of preferences for income, leisure, and public goods. Standard theory, which supposes that persons want more income and more leisure, does not predict how they resolve the tension between these desires. Empirical studies of labor supply have been numerous but have not shed much light on the matter. A persistent problem is that empirical researchers have imposed strong preference assumptions that lack foundation. This paper examines anew the problem of inference on preferences and considers the implications for comparison of tax policies. I first perform a basic revealed-preference analysis that imposes no assumptions on the preference distribution beyond the presumption that persons prefer more income and leisure. This shows that observation of a person's labor supply under a status quo tax policy may bound his labor supply under a proposed policy or may have no implications, depending on the shapes of the two tax schedules and the location of status quo labor supply. I next explore the identifying power of two assumptions restricting the population distribution of income-leisure preferences. One assumes that groups of persons who face different choice sets have the same distribution of preferences, while the other adds restrictions on the shape of this distribution. I then address utilitarian policy comparison with partial knowledge of preferences. Partial knowledge of preferences implies partial knowledge of the welfare function. Hence, it may not be possible to rank policies.
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Overconfidence, Monetary Policy Committees and Chairman Dominance
Carl Andreas Claussen et al.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, February 2012, Pages 699-711
Abstract:
Monetary policy decisions are typically characterized by three features: (i) decisions are made by a committee, (ii) the committee members often disagree, and (iii) the chairman is almost never on the losing side in the vote. We show that the combination of overconfident policymakers and a chairman with agenda-setting rights can explain all these features. The optimal agenda-setting power to the chairman is a strictly concave function of the degree of overconfidence. We also show that the quality of advice produced by the central bank staff is higher in a flat organization than in a hierarchical one.
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Equity Risk Incentives and Corporate Tax Aggressiveness
Sonja Olhoft Rego
Journal of Accounting Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines equity risk incentives as one determinant of corporate tax aggressiveness. Prior research finds that equity risk incentives motivate managers to make risky investment and financing decisions, since risky activities increase stock return volatility and the value of stock option portfolios. Aggressive tax strategies involve significant uncertainty and can impose costs on both firms and managers. As a result, managers must be incentivized to engage in risky tax avoidance that is expected to generate net benefits for the firm and its shareholders. We predict that equity risk incentives motivate managers to undertake risky tax strategies. Consistent with this prediction we find that larger equity risk incentives are associated with greater tax risk and the magnitude of this effect is economically significant. Our results are robust across four measures of tax risk, but do not vary across several proxies for strength of corporate governance. We conclude that equity risk incentives are a significant determinant of corporate tax aggressiveness.
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Estimating Dynamic Income Responses to Tax Reform
Bertil Holmlund & Martin Söderström
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, November 2011
Abstract:
We study income responses to income tax changes by using a large panel of Swedish tax payers over the period 1991-2002. Changes in statutory tax rates as well as changes in tax bracket thresholds provide exogenous variations in tax rates that can be used to identify income responses. We estimate dynamic income models which allow us to distinguish between short-run and long-run effects in a straightforward fashion. For men, the estimates of the long-run elasticity of income with respect to the net-of-tax rate hover in a range between 0.10 and 0.30. The estimates for women are statistically insignificant. We simulate the fiscal consequences of a tax reform that reduces the top marginal tax rate by five percentage points. Such a reform may have negligible effects on tax revenues when the interactions between income taxes and other taxes are taken into account.