Taxation and Public Spending Efficiency: An International Comparison

Antonio Afonso, Joao Jalles and Ana Venâncio ()

No 2019/80, Working Papers REM from ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, REM, Universidade de Lisboa

Abstract: This paper evaluates the relevance of the taxation for public spending efficiency in a sample of OECD economies in the period 2003-2017. First, we compute the data envelopment analysis (DEA) scores and the Malmquist productivity index to measure the change in total factor productivity, the change in efficiency and the change in technology. Second, we explain these newly computed public efficiency scores with tax structures using a reduced-form panel data regression specification. Looking at the period between 2007 and 2017, our main findings are as follows: inputs could be theoretically lower by approximately 32-34%; the Malmquist indices show an overall decrease in technology and in TFP. Crucial for policymaking, we find that expenditure efficiency is negatively associated with taxation, more specifically direct and indirect taxes negatively affect government efficiency performance, and the same is true for social security contributions.

Keywords: government spending efficiency; public sector performance; tax structure; data envelopment analysis (DEA); Malmquist indices; non-parametric estimation; panel data; OECD (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C23 H11 H21 H50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-pbe and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Taxation and Public Spending Efficiency: An International Comparison (2021)
Working Paper: Taxation and Public Spending Efficiency: An International Comparison (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ise:remwps:wp0802019

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