EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Bush Tax Cut and National Saving

Alan Auerbach

National Tax Journal, 2002, vol. 55, issue 3, 387-407

Abstract: Following through on pledges made during his election campaign, President Bush proposed and Congress passed a substantial tax cut in 2001, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA). Much has been written about the size of the tax cut, its impact on the federal budget, its distributional consequences, and its short-run macroeconomic impact. There has been less focus on EGTRRA’s incentive effects; one of the most important potential behavioral effects is on saving. To analyze the behavioral effects of the Bush tax cut on saving and other macroeconomic variables, I use the Auerbach-Kotlikoff (1987) model in conjunction with the NBER’s TAXSIM model. An interesting by-product of this analysis is the "dynamic scoring" of the tax cut--the estimated feedback effects of behavior on revenue. By comparing the revenue losses generated by the model with those that would occur without any behavioral response, one can estimate how much of the static revenue loss would be recouped by expanded economic activity. The simulations suggest that dynamic scoring has a significant impact on estimated revenue losses, but that the tax cut’s impact on national saving is still negative in the long run.

Date: 2002
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.17310/ntj.2002.3.02 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.17310/ntj.2002.3.02 (text/html)
Access is restricted to subscribers and members of the National Tax Association.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Bush Tax Cut and National Saving (2002) Downloads
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:ntj:journl:v:55:y:2002:i:3:p:387-407

Access Statistics for this article

National Tax Journal is currently edited by Stacy Dickert-Conlin and William M. Gentry

More articles in National Tax Journal from National Tax Association, National Tax Journal Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The University of Chicago Press ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:55:y:2002:i:3:p:387-407