Can welfare states outgrow their fiscal sustainability problems?

Erling Holmøy ()
Additional contact information
Erling Holmøy: Statistics Norway, https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/ansatte

Discussion Papers from Statistics Norway, Research Department

Abstract: The paper analyses the fiscal effects of productivity shifts in the private sector. Within a stylized model with inelastic labour supply, it shows that productivity shifts in sectors producing non-traded goods (N-sector) are irrelevant for the tax rates necessary to meet the government budget constraint. Also productivity shifts in the traded goods sector (T-sector) have a neutral fiscal effect, provided that the wage dependency of the tax bases and government expenditures are equal. If the wage dependency of expenditures exceeds that of revenues, tax rates must be increased in order to restore the government budget constraint. Simulations on a CGE model of the Norwegian economy confirm the theoretical results, and demonstrate that productivty growth on balance has an adverse fiscal effect. Moreover, the necessary increase in the tax rates of a productivity improvement in the T-sector is three times as high as the corresponding effect of a comparable productivity shift in the N-sector.

Keywords: Fiscal sustainability; productivity growth; general equilibrium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H30 J18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ssb.no/a/publikasjoner/pdf/DP/dp487.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ssb:dispap:487

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Statistics Norway, Research Department P.O.Box 8131 Dep, N-0033 Oslo, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by L Maasø ().