Effects of Consumption Taxes on Real Exchange Rates and Trade Balances

Caroline Freund () and Joseph Gagnon

No WP17-5, Working Paper Series from Peterson Institute for International Economics

Abstract: This paper examines the effects of border-adjusted consumption taxes (mainly value added taxes or VATs) in a sample of 34 advanced economies from 1970 through 2015. We find that the real exchange rate tends to rise by the full amount of any consumption tax increase, with little effect on the current account balance and modest offsetting effects on the trade and income balances. Case studies suggest that adjustment comes initially through prices. We note that the border-adjusted cash flow tax of the House Republicans differs in important ways from consumption taxes used in our study, which raises the possibility of a slower adjustment process with temporarily larger trade effects.

Keywords: VAT; border tax adjustment; exchange rate adjustment; current account adjustment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F31 F32 H20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-opm, nep-pbe and nep-pub
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp17-5

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