Public money
Tax evasion in new disguise? Examining tax havens' international bank deposits
Lukas Menkhoff & Jakob Miethe
Journal of Public Economics, August 2019, Pages 53-78
Abstract:
Recent efforts to reduce international tax evasion focus on information exchange with tax havens. Using bilateral bank data for 1397 countrypairs in a balanced quarterly panel from 2003:I to 2017:IV, we first show that information-on-request treaties with tax havens reduce bank deposits in tax havens by 27.5%. Second, also deposits from tax havens in high tax countries decline after such treaties are signed, giving authorities a second angle to detect tax evasion. Both reactions dissipate overt time and treaties signed after 2010 trigger no further reactions. These results cannot be explained by deposit shifting alone and we find no evidence of transitioning into legality. Third, recent policy initiatives based on the automatic exchange of bank information lead to very similar initial reactions as earlier treaties, consistent with adjustments on the part of tax evaders. This suggests that tax evaders adapt to established information exchange treaties by using new disguises to hide their true income, and react again to new measures. These results cast doubt on the effectiveness of current forms of information exchange to tackle international tax evasion.
Use It or Lose It: Efficiency Gains from Wealth Taxation
Fatih Guvenen et al.
NBER Working Paper, September 2019
Abstract:
How does wealth taxation differ from capital income taxation? When the return on investment is equal across individuals, a well-known result is that the two tax systems are equivalent. Motivated by recent empirical evidence documenting persistent heterogeneity in rates of return across individuals, we revisit this question. With such heterogeneity, the two tax systems have opposite implications for both efficiency and inequality. Under capital income taxation, entrepreneurs who are more productive, and therefore generate more income, pay higher taxes. Under wealth taxation, entrepreneurs who have similar wealth levels pay similar taxes regardless of their productivity, which expands the tax base, shifts the tax burden toward unproductive entrepreneurs, and raises the savings rate of productive ones. This reallocation increases aggregate productivity and output. In the simulated model parameterized to match the US data, replacing the capital income tax with a wealth tax in a revenue-neutral fashion delivers a significantly higher average lifetime utility to a newborn (about 7.5% in consumption-equivalent terms). Turning to optimal taxation, the optimal wealth tax (OWT) in a stationary equilibrium is positive and yields even larger welfare gains. In contrast, the optimal capital income tax (OCIT) is negative — a subsidy — and large, and it delivers lower welfare gains than the wealth tax. Furthermore, the subsidy policy increases consumption inequality, whereas the wealth tax reduces it slightly. We also consider an extension that models the transition path and find that individuals who are alive at the time of the policy change, on average, would incur large welfare losses if the new policy is OCIT but would experience large welfare gains if the new policy is an OWT. We conclude that wealth taxation has the potential to raise productivity while simultaneously reducing consumption inequality.
Hayekian welfare states: Explaining the coexistence of economic freedom and big government
Andreas Bergh
Journal of Institutional Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
To explain the coexistence of economic freedom and big government, this paper distinguishes between big government in the fiscal sense of requiring high taxes, and big government in the Hayekian sense of requiring knowledge that is difficult to acquire from a central authority. The indicators of government size in measures of economic freedom capture the fiscal size but ignore the Hayekian knowledge problem. Thinking about government size in both the fiscal and Hayekian dimensions suggests the possibility of Hayekian welfare states where trust and state capacity facilitate experimentation and learning, resulting in a public sector that is big in a fiscal sense but not necessarily more vulnerable to the Hayekian knowledge problem. Pensions in Sweden are used as a case to illustrate the empirical relevance of the argument. The new pension system represents big government in a fiscal sense, but by relying on decentralized choice it requires relatively little central knowledge.
The Effects of a Money-Financed Fiscal Stimulus
Jordi Galí
NBER Working Paper, September 2019
Abstract:
I analyze the effects of a money-financed fiscal stimulus and compare them with those resulting from a conventional debt-financed stimulus. I study the effects of both a tax cut and an increase in government purchases, with and without a binding zero lower bound (ZLB) on the nominal interest rate. When the ZLB is not binding, a money-financed fiscal stimulus is shown to have much larger multipliers than a debt-financed fiscal stimulus. That difference in effectiveness persists, but is much smaller, under a binding ZLB. Nominal rigidities are shown to play a major role in shaping those effects.
Oversight and Efficiency in Public Projects: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis
Eduard Calvo, Ruomeng Cui & Juan Camilo Serpa
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the United States, 42% of public infrastructure projects report delays or cost overruns. To mitigate this problem, regulators scrutinize project operations. We study the effect of oversight on delays and overruns with 262,857 projects spanning 71 federal agencies and 54,739 contractors. We identify our results using a federal bylaw: if the project’s budget is above a cutoff, procurement officers actively oversee the contractor’s operations; otherwise, most operational checks are waived. We find that oversight increases delays by 6.1%–13.8% and overruns by 1.4%–1.6%. We also show that oversight is most obstructive when the contractor has no experience in public projects, is paid with a fixed-fee contract with performance-based incentives, or performs a labor-intensive task. Oversight is least obstructive — or even beneficial — when the contractor is experienced, paid with a time-and-materials contract, or conducts a machine-intensive task.
US State constitutional entrenchment and default in the 19th century
John Dove & Andrew Young
Journal of Institutional Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Constitutional scholars emphasize the importance of an enduring, stable constitutional order, which North and Weingast (1989) argue is consistent with credible commitments to sustainable fiscal policies. However, this view is controversial and has received little empirical study. We use 19th-century US state-level data to estimate relationships between constitutional design and the likelihood of a government default. Results indicate that more entrenched and less specific constitutions are associated with a lower likelihood of default.
Tax-Induced Inequalities in the Sharing Economy
Yao Cui & Andrew Davis
Cornell University Working Paper, April 2019
Abstract:
The growth of sharing economy marketplaces like Airbnb has recently generated discussions on their negative socioeconomic impact and lack of regulation. As a result of this, most major cities in the United States have started to charge an "occupancy tax"' (which is common for hotels) to Airbnb bookings. While this policy is intended to alleviate the competitive pressure that Airbnb creates to hotels, it is unclear whether this goal is effectively achieved or whether the policy has led to unintended consequences for Airbnb participants. Motivated by the recent tax regulation on Airbnb, we empirically investigate the effects of the occupancy tax policy on Airbnb listing revenues, sales, and prices. We combine a novel machine learning method (generalized causal forest) with the difference-in-differences framework to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects. One of our key findings is that the tax policy adversely affects residential hosts more than commercial hosts, because commercial hosts better respond to the tax policy by correctly adjusting their listing prices. Moreover, the tax policy appears to negatively affect those listings whose service offerings are significantly different from hotels. This indicates that customers may exhibit discriminatory tax-aversion behavior towards listings which are actually more unique to Airbnb. Overall, these results suggest that the current tax policy may over-penalize the types of listings that are meant to be protected and hurt social welfare. Based on these findings, we provide insights to policy makers and sharing platforms regarding tax regulation on the sharing economy.
Taxation and the Superrich
Florian Scheuer & Joel Slemrod
NBER Working Paper, August 2019
Abstract:
This paper addresses the modern optimal tax progressivity literature, which clarifies the key role of the behavioral response to taxation and accounts for the incomes of the superrich being qualitatively different than others. Some may be “superstars,” for whom small differences in talent are magnified into much larger earnings differences, while others may work in winner-take-all markets, such that their effort to climb the ladder of success reduces the returns to others. We stress that pivotal tax-rate elasticities are not structural parameters, and will be smaller the broader and less plastic is the tax base and the more effective is the enforcement of tax evasion. For this reason, normative analysis of tax rates should be accompanied by attention to the tax base, with special attention to capital gains, which comprise a large fraction of the taxable income of the superrich.
The Role of Taxes in the Disconnect Between Corporate Performance and Economic Growth
Urooj Khan, Suresh Nallareddy & Ethan Rouen
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate the relation between corporate performance and overall economic growth in the United States. In particular, we focus on the impact of the U.S. corporate tax regime on this relation. Exploiting time-series variation and a tax shock, we document that the relatively higher corporate income tax rate and the tax treatment of foreign earnings of U.S. corporations have contributed to a disconnect between the performance of the corporate sector and the overall economy. Specifically, the growth of domestic (national) corporate profits, on average, has outpaced the growth of the domestic (national) economy, and this disconnect increases as the difference between the U.S. corporate income tax rate and the average tax rate of the other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries increases. The underlying mechanism is fewer corporate profits being channeled into subsequent domestic investments when the U.S. tax rate is relatively higher, leading to lower economic growth. Our findings have implications for policy setters.
Do Targeted Business Subsidies Improve Income and Reduce Poverty? A Synthetic Control Approach
Jacob Bundrick & Weici Yuan
Economic Development Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Interstate competition for economic development has led many states to adopt targeted economic development incentive programs known as deal-closing funds. Deal-closing funds allow state officials to provide discretionary cash grants to select businesses to attract and retain economic development projects. However, whether these targeted business subsidies increase prosperity in the local economy remains unclear. The authors use evidence from Arkansas’s Quick Action Closing Fund to analyze how effective deal-closing funds are at increasing incomes and decreasing poverty. Specifically, the causal effects of the Quick Action Closing Fund on Arkansas’s county-level per capita personal income and poverty rates are estimated using a synthetic control approach. The results largely suggest that the business subsidy program fails to increase incomes and lower poverty rates over the long term, at least at the county level. These findings should serve as a caution to policy makers who wish to improve incomes and poverty rates with targeted business subsidies.
Redistributive innovation policy, inequality, and efficiency
Parantap Basu & Yoseph Getachew
Journal of Public Economic Theory, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the efficiency and distributional effects of regressive and progressive public R&D policies that target high‐tech and low‐tech sectors using a heterogenous‐agent growth model with in‐house R&D and incomplete capital markets. We find that such policies have important implications for efficiency and inequality. A regressive public R&D investment financed by income tax could boost growth and welfare via a positive effect on individual savings and effort. It could, however, also lower growth and welfare via its effect on the efficiency–inequality trade‐off. Thus, the relationship between public R&D spending and welfare is hump‐shaped, admitting an optimal degree of regressivity in public R&D spending. Using our baseline model, and the US state‐level GDP data, we derive the degree of regressiveness of public R&D investment in US states. We find that US states are more regressive in their R&D investment than the optimal regressiveness implied by our growth model.