Quantifying Revenue Windfalls from the Irish Housing Market

Diarmaid Addison-Smyth and Kieran McQuinn
Additional contact information
Diarmaid Addison-Smyth: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland

The Economic and Social Review, 2010, vol. 41, issue 2, 201-233

Abstract: The speed and severity of the decline in the Irish fiscal position in recent years raises a number of important issues regarding the assessment of fiscal policy within the EU. From a position of relative strength, with large surpluses and a low debt to GDP ratio, the Irish public finances have rapidly deteriorated, culminating in an Excessive Deficit Procedure being launched in early 2009. In hindsight, it is evident that tax revenues were on an unsustainable path in recent years due, in large part, to structural imbalances within the economy, mainly associated with the housing market. The excess growth in the latter culminated in large and transitory tax revenue windfalls, which ultimately proved unsustainable. These windfalls contributed to large general government and cyclically adjusted budget surpluses. This paper seeks to quantify the windfall gains associated with property taxes through modelling housing related tax receipts over the period 2002 to 2009. From this, estimates are derived as to the underlying or property adjusted fiscal position, which is found in various years, to have diverged greatly from actual outturns.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.esr.ie/Vol41_2/04-Addison.pdf First version, 2010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Quantifying Revenue Windfalls from the Irish Housing Market (2009)
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:eso:journl:v:41:y:2010:i:2:p:201-233

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Economic and Social Review from Economic and Social Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Aedin Doris ().