Public debt asymmetries: the effect on taxes and spending in the European Union

Signe Krogstrup

No 162, Working Paper Series from European Central Bank

Abstract: The aim of this paper is two-fold: First, assuming public debts are pre-determined and in their steady state in EU countries, the paper investigates the effect of asymmetric debt service obligations on taxes, primary spending and the tax mix in EU countries. Second, it investigates how increased tax competition may change these effects. The impact of debt service on taxes, primary spending and the tax mix is derived in a simple model of tax competition, and the hypotheses derived from the model are tested empirically for a panel of EU countries. Cross- country differences in public debts are found to lead to asymmetries in taxes and primary expenditures across EU countries, with high debt countries having lower expenditures and higher taxes than low debt countries. Capital mobility is found to increase these asymmetries, and trigger cross-country asymmetries in the tax mix of EU countries. JEL Classification: H6, H23, H73, H87, F02

Keywords: asymmetric; European Union; public debt; public finance; tax competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ecb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp162.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ecb:ecbwps:2002162

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from European Central Bank 60640 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Official Publications ().