How Is Tax Policy Conducted Over the Business Cycle?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Vegh, Carlos A.; Vuletin, Guillermo
• 署名单位: Johns Hopkins University; Brookings Institution
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20120218
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 327-370
• 关键词: fiscal-policy; budget deficits; GOVERNMENT; inflation; determinants; taxation

摘要

It is well known by now that government spending has typically been procyclical in developing economies but acyclical or countercyclical in industrial countries. Little, if any, is known, however, about the cyclical behavior of tax rates (as opposed to tax revenues, which are endogenous to the business cycle and, hence, cannot shed light on the cyclicality of tax policy). We build a novel dataset on tax rates for 62 countries for the period 1960-2013 that comprises corporate income, personal income, and value-added tax rates. We find that tax policy is acyclical in industrial countries but mostly procyclical in developing countries.