How is Tax Policy Conducted over the Business Cycle?

Carlos Vegh and Guillermo Vuletin

No 17753, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: 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, by and large, tax policy is acyclical in industrial countries but mostly procyclical in developing countries. Further, tax policy in countries with better institutions and/or more integrated with world capital markets tends to be less procyclical/more countercyclical.

JEL-codes: E32 E62 H20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-cba, nep-mac and nep-pbe
Note: IFM
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (52)

Published as Carlos A. Vegh & Guillermo Vuletin, 2015. "How Is Tax Policy Conducted over the Business Cycle?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 327-70, August.

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Journal Article: How Is Tax Policy Conducted over the Business Cycle? (2015)
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