Read My Lips? Taxes and Elections

Clemens Fuest, Klaus Gründler (), Niklas Potrafke and Fabian Ruthardt

No 71, EconPol Working Paper from ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich

Abstract: We introduce a new dataset that includes quantitative harmonized indices of tax reforms based on qualitative information of about 900 Economic Surveys from the OECD and 37,000 tax-related news from the IBFD archives. The data set provides indicators on tax reforms for tax rates and tax bases, along with detailed sub-indices for six types of taxes (23 countries, 1960–2014). Relating tax reforms to the timing of elections, we examine electoral cycles in tax reforms. Our results show that politicians postpone tax rate increases to after elections. A key innovation of our data set is the coverage of harmonized indices for six tax types. Examining heterogeneity across tax types, we find that electoral cycles are particularly pronounced for value added tax rates and personal income tax rates.

Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/EconPol_Working_Paper_71_Taxes-and-Elections.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Read my lips? Taxes and elections (2024)
Working Paper: Read My Lips? Taxes and Elections (2021)
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:ces:econwp:_71

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EconPol Working Paper from ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().