 Dining and Wining During the Pandemic? A Quasi-Experiment on Tax Cuts and Consumer Spending in LithuaniaAnnals of Economics and Finance, 2024, vol. 25, issue 2, 575-590 Abstract: Could temporary tax cuts stimulate consumer spending? Sector-specific measures to the COVID-19 pandemic provides a quasi-experimental variation in consumption patterns to infer a causal effect of tax policy changes. Using a novel dataset of daily debit and credit card transactions, this paper investigates the effectiveness of Lithuania's decision to cut the standard value-added tax (VAT) rate from 21 percent to 9 percent on restaurants and catering services during the pandemic in a difference-in-differences regression framework. I obtain robust evidence that the VAT reduction has had no statistically significant impact on consumer spending on restaurants and catering services, while other policy interventions such as mobility restrictions and vaccination have more pronounced effects. These results have important policy implications in terms of the expected stimulative effect of sector-specific VAT reductions and the effective design of fiscal policy interventions to counter the impact of pandemics during which mobility is highly constrained. Keywords: Tax policy; Value-added tax; Consumer spending; Pandemic; Difference-in-differences; Lithuania (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cuf:journl:y:2024:v:25:i:2:cevik Access Statistics for this article Annals of Economics and Finance is currently edited by Heng-fu Zou More articles in Annals of Economics and Finance from Society for AEF Contact information at EDIRC. |
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