An empirical investigation of tax policy in G-7 countries

This dissertation consists of three essays on the effects of fiscal policy on the economic activity. The first and second chapters investigate the response of major macroeconomic variables to four different types of tax policy innovations within a VAR framework using contemporaneous restrictions and long-run restrictions, respectively. Although G-7 countries seem to react differently to tax policy innovations, we do not find any evidence for the existence of negative corporate tax multipliers (for output) or positive income tax multipliers (for output) with both identification schemes. The cross-country variation in the signs of indirect tax is considerably higher. The effects of social security tax innovations on output exhibit cross-country heterogeneity with contemporaneous restrictions. We do not find any significant effects of social security tax innovations on output with a SVAR approach that uses long-run restrictions. We conclude that the composition of the total tax response is even more important than the magnitude of the total tax response, and thus should be taken into consideration in explaining cross-country variation in the sign and magnitude of tax multipliers. The third chapter of this dissertation uses an unbalanced panel data set that includes annual estimates of cyclically adjusted government expenditures, capital outlays, income tax revenues, indirect tax revenues, corporate tax revenues and social security tax revenues. The percentage share of these estimates in GDP is used to investigate the effects of fiscal policy on economic growth, and results are compared with regression results that use 5-year averages of cyclically unadjusted variables. The empirical results from both sets of regressions suggest that only taxes on household income have negative effects on per capita income growth. We also show that government expenditures that include the government wage bill have significant negative effects on economic growth. These results are consistent with the recent literature that emphasizes the non-Keynesian effects of fiscal policy through labor market, firm profits and private investment. We consolidate our findings by showing that both government expenditures and income taxes have distortionary effects on private investment

Faculty Work as Philanthropy or Philanthropy as Faculty Work?

Employing Robert Payton’s (1988) definition of philanthropy, “Voluntary action for the public good” (p. 4), Faculty Work and the Public Good: Philanthropy, Engagement, and Academic Professionalism offers a fresh look at faculty work as philanthropy. The purpose of this review essay is to provide a brief review of some of the key propositions in this book and to explore how faculty work as philanthropy may be understood in non-U.S. cultural contexts. We start our exploration of faculty work as philanthropy in non-U.S. contexts by examining this construct in the U.S. as presented by Faculty Work and the Public Good and by laying out key forces that it sets forth as shaping faculty work as philanthropic practice: institutional structure and employment frameworks, resource constraints, and discretionary constraints

Financial Integration in the GCC Region: Market Size Versus National Effects

© 2019, The Author(s). This paper examines financial spillovers between the four largest equity markets (by market capitalization) in the GCC region using a VAR-GARCH (1,1) framework that sheds light on interdependence as well as the effects of the 2014 oil crisis. Since the UAE is a federation including two stock exchanges (Abu Dhabi and Dubai), it is possible to test whether being part of a federal union matters more than market size in terms of financial integration. Our results suggest that the latter is more important, since we could not find evidence of stronger linkages between the Abu Dhabi and Dubai markets compared to those between other markets in the region. By contrast, there are significant spillover effects, both in the mean and in the volatility, from the largest market of Saudi Arabia to Qatar and the two markets in the UAE, which confirms that market capitalization is a more important determinant of financial integration than belonging to a federal union. Further, spillovers from the larger markets have become stronger as a result of the 2014 oil crisis. Finally, there is also evidence of spillovers from the smaller to the larger markets

Fiscal Policy, Private Investment and Economic Growth: Evidence from G-7 Countries

Measuring the effects of fiscal policy on economic growth is difficult, because fiscal policy variables are influenced by changes in income. This paper uses an unbalanced panel data set for G-7 countries for the period 1965-2000 that includes annual estimates of cyclically adjusted government expenditures, capital outlays, income tax revenues, indirect tax revenues, corporate tax revenues and social security tax revenues, based on definitions developed by OECD revenue statistics. The percentage share of these estimates in GDP is used to investigate the effects of fiscal policy on economic growth, and results are compared with regression results that use 5-year averages of cyclically unadjusted variables. The empirical results from both sets of regressions suggest that only taxes on household income and government expenditures have negative effects on per capita income growth. We consolidate our findings by showing that both government expenditures and income taxes have distortionary effects on private investment

Faculty work as philanthropy or philanthropy as faculty work?

Employing Robert Payton’s (1988) definition of philanthropy, “Voluntary action for the public good” (p. 4), Faculty Work and the Public Good: Philanthropy, Engagement, and Academic Professionalism offers a fresh look at faculty work as philanthropy. The purpose of this review essay is to provide a brief review of some of the key propositions in this book and to explore how faculty work as philanthropy may be understood in non-U.S. cultural contexts. We start our exploration of faculty work as philanthropy in non-U.S. contexts by examining this construct in the U.S. as presented by Faculty Work and the Public Good and by laying out key forces that it sets forth as shaping faculty work as philanthropic practice: institutional structure and employment frameworks, resource constraints, and discretionary constraints.SIN FINANCIACIÓNNo data 201

Wer Fake News (nicht) erkennt und verbreitet

Anhand von groß angelegten Umfragen in Deutschland und im Vereinigten Königreich untersuchen wir die individuellen Determinanten der Fähigkeit, Fake News zu erkennen, und der Neigung, sie zu teilen. Wir unterscheiden zwischen absichtlichem und versehentlichem Teilen von Fake News. Das versehentliche Teilen von Fake News geschieht viel häufiger als das absichtliche Teilen. Außerdem zeigen unsere Ergebnisse, dass ältere, männliche, einkommensstarke und politisch links orientierte Befragte Fake News besser erkennen. Das versehentliche Teilen von Fake News nimmt mit dem Alter ab und kommt unter rechtsgerichteten Befragten häufiger vor. Das absichtliche Teilen von Fake News ist vor allem bei jüngeren Befragten im Vereinigten Königreich stärker ausgeprägt

On the heterogeneous effects of tax policy on labor market outcomes

Many recent studies have documented the heterogeneous effects of government‐spending shocks on major macroeconomic variables, particularly on output. We delve deeper into the heterogeneous effects of fiscal policy innovations, but focus on the tax policy innovations and their impact on the labor market, while accounting for gender, race, ethnicity, and the business cycle. Using microlevel data from the United States, we find that: (i) Tax shocks have varying employment effects depending on gender, race, and the stage of the business cycle; (ii) Sector, industry, and occupational segregation in labor markets by gender, race, and ethnicity can explain most of the variation in response to fiscal policy shocks

Negotiating with Terrorists: The Costs of Compliance

© 2019 by the Southern Economic Association It is often argued that negotiating with terrorists will encourage terrorist attacks. To date, corroborating empirical evidence is scarce. Using ITERATE data, we investigate the impact of conceding to terrorist demands on terror activity. We restrict attention to hostage events with clear-cut demands from terrorists. Our sample period runs from 1978 to 2005 and comprises 1435 events in 125 countries. Estimating a flexible and dynamic Structured Additive Regression model, we find that the percentage of successfully negotiated events has a nonlinear effect on future terror intensity consistent with our simple theoretical model. More specifically, although moderate rates of negotiation increase the number of future terror events, higher negotiation rates tend to have the opposite effect. The estimated threshold is around 20%