Has Germany’s temporary VAT rates cut as part of the COVID-19 fiscal stimulus boosted growth?

Michael Funke and Raphael Terasa

Journal of Policy Modeling, 2022, vol. 44, issue 2, 450-473

Abstract: On 3 June 2020, the German government announced a EUR 130 billion fiscal stimulus package to stimulate market demand and jumpstart the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the spring of 2020. The most prominent measure of this package is an unconventional fiscal policy in the form of a temporary VAT rates cut for six months, from 1 July to 31 December 2020. Employing a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) framework, we study the efficiency of the VAT tax rates cut for ameliorating the consequences of the pandemic recession. The simulation of the calibrated DSGE model yields a tax policy-induced real GDP increase of about 0.3% points for 2020.

Keywords: Fiscal policy; Value-added tax; DSGE model; COVID-19; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E30 E60 H25 I15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161893822000175
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jpolmo:v:44:y:2022:i:2:p:450-473

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpolmod.2022.03.008

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Policy Modeling is currently edited by A. M. Costa

More articles in Journal of Policy Modeling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().