Tax structure and economic growth

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lee, Y; Gordon, RH
• 署名单位: Hanyang University; University of California System; University of California San Diego
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2004.07.002
• 发表日期: 2005
• 页码: 1027-1043
• 关键词: tax structure; Economic growth; regressions

摘要

Past theoretical work predicts that higher corporate tax rates should decrease economic growth rates, while the effects of high personal tax rates are less clear. In this paper, we explore how tax policies in fact affect a country's growth rate, using cross-country data during 1970-1997. We find that statutory corporate tax rates are significantly negatively correlated with cross-sectional differences in average economic growth rates, controlling for various other determinants of economic growth, and other standard tax variables. In fixed-effect regressions, we again find that increases in corporate tax rates lead to lower future growth rates within countries. The coefficient estimates suggest that a cut in the corporate tax rate by 10 percentage points will raise the annual growth rate by one to two percentage points. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.