Do Tax Cuts Starve the Beast: The Effect of Tax Changes on Government Spending

The hypothesis that decreases in taxes reduce future government spending is often cited as a reason for cutting taxes. However, because taxes change for many reasons, examinations of the relationship between overall measures of taxation and subsequent spending are plagued by problems of reverse causation and omitted variable bias. To deal with these problems, this paper examines the behavior of government expenditures following legislated tax changes that narrative sources suggest are largely uncorrelated with other factors affecting spending. The results provide no support for the hypothesis that tax cuts restrain government spending; indeed, they suggest that tax cuts may actually increase spending. The results also indicate that the main effect of tax cuts on the government budget is to induce subsequent legislated tax increases. Examination of four episodes of major tax cuts reinforces these conclusions.

The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks

This paper investigates the impact of changes in the level of taxation on economic activity. We use the narrative record -- presidential speeches, executive-branch documents, and Congressional reports -- to identify the size, timing, and principal motivation for all major postwar tax policy actions. This narrative analysis allows us to separate revenue changes resulting from legislation from changes occurring for other reasons. It also allows us to further separate legislated changes into those taken for reasons related to prospective economic conditions, such as countercyclical actions and tax changes tied to changes in government spending, and those taken for more exogenous reasons, such as to reduce an inherited budget deficit or to promote long-run growth. We then examine the behavior of output following these more exogenous legislated changes. The resulting estimates indicate that tax increases are highly contractionary. The effects are strongly significant, highly robust, and much larger than those obtained using broader measures of tax changes. The large effect stems in considerable part from a powerful negative effect of tax increases on investment. We also find that legislated tax increases designed to reduce a persistent budget deficit appear to have much smaller output costs than other tax increases.

Do Tax Cuts Starve the Beast? The Effect of Tax Changes on Government Spending

macroeconomics, tax cuts, government spending, taxation

What Ends Recessions?

This paper analyzes the contributions of monetary and fiscal policy to postwar economic recoveries. We find that the Federal Reserve typically responds to downturns with prompt and large reductions in interest rates. Discretionary fiscal policy, in contrast, rarely reacts before the trough in economic activity, and even then the responses are usually small. Simulations using multipliers from both simple regressions and a large macroeconomic model show that the interest rate falls account for nearly all of the above-average growth that occurs early in recoveries. Our estimates also indicate that on several occasions expansionary policies have contributed substantially to above-normal growth outside of recoveries. Finally, the results suggest that the persistence of aggregate output movements is largely the result of the extreme persistence of the contribution of policy changes.

Monetary policy and the well-being of the poor

Poverty is arguably the most pressing economic problem of our time. And because rising inequality, for a given level of income,> implies greater poverty, the distribution of income is also a central concern. At the same time, monetary policy is one of the modern age's most potent tools for managing the economy. Given the importance of poverty and the influence of monetary policy, it is natural to ask if monetary policy can be used as a tool to help the poor.> In a presentation at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's 1998 symposium, "Income Inequality: Issues and Policy Options," Christina and David Romer examined the influence of monetary policy on poverty and inequality both over the business cycle in the United States and over the longer run in a large sample of countries. They argued that although expansionary policy induces a decline in the poverty rate, the decline is eventually reversed. Second, monetary policy that aims to restrain inflation and minimize output fluctuations is likely to be associated with improved conditions for the poor over time.Monetary policy - United States ; Income ; Poverty