Fiscal Devaluation Research Articles

Trade Policies and Fiscal Devaluations

Fiscal devaluations—an increase in import tariffs and export subsidies (IX) or an increase in value-added taxes and payroll subsidies (VP)—have been shown to provide as much stimulus under fixed exchange rates as a currency devaluation. We find that if agents expect policies to be reversed and the tax pass-through is large, VP is contractionary and IX provides a modest boost. In our medium-scale DSGE model, both features are crucial in accounting for Germany’s underperformance in response to VP in 2007. These findings cast doubt on fiscal devaluations as a cyclical stabilization tool when monetary policy is constrained. (JEL E32, E52, E62, F13, F33, H20)

РЕГУЛЯТОРНИЙ ПОТЕНЦІАЛ ФІСКАЛЬНОЇ СИСТЕМИ УКРАЇНИ: ЗМІСТ ТА ОСОБЛИВОСТІ РЕАЛІЗАЦІЇ В УМОВАХ ЕКОНОМІЧНОЇ НЕСТАБІЛЬНОСТІ

The urgency of the topic is due to the need to study the mechanism of the regulatory function of taxes through which the state actively influences the macroeconomic processes in conditions of economic instability. In conditions of economic ups and downs, the fiscal system, as a basic element of the economy, on the one hand, provides the financial foundation of the state, and on the other hand - is one of the main tools for tax policy and government intervention in the economic system. Taxes are an integral part of the fiscal system; they are an objectively existing institution of society, and one of the factors influencing social and economic development, which requires a study of its mission and content. The peculiarities of the regulatory function of taxes in the conditions of endogenous and exogenous factors of instability are revealed. It is shown that integration into the external uncertain financial space causes a number of non-standard problems for the national system of state regulation of the economy, in particular, the problem of choosing between the policy of nominal devaluation and the policy of fiscal devaluation. The article analyzes the quantitative criteria of tax policy and their impact on the effectiveness of the regulatory function of data in Ukraine during 2014-2022. Based on the analysis the conclusion is made about the predominantly fiscal focus of regulatory measures of modern state tax policy. To assess the limitations of the regulatory and instrumental role of taxes in performing the exclusive functions of the state in the economy and society, we described the institutional limitations of the regulatory function of taxes due to their connection with the institutional structure of the economy through the channels of economic sovereignty and legitimacy, trust and state debt. The content of institutional traps related to the deficit of tax revenues to the state budget is revealed, and it is shown that the tendency to avoid these traps is an institutional feature that limits the effect of tax instruments of state regulation of economic processes. Some ways of tax reform in Ukraine are given.

Trade policies and fiscal devaluations

Fiscal devaluations—an increase in import tariffs and export subsidies (IX) or an increase in value-added taxes and payroll subsidies (VP)—have been shown to provide as much stimulus under fixed exchange rates as a currency devaluation. We find that if agents expect policies to be reversed and the tax pass-through is large, VP is contractionary and IX provides a modest boost. In our medium-scale DSGE model, both features are crucial in accounting for Germany’s underperformance in response to VP in 2007. These findings cast doubt on fiscal devaluations as a cyclical stabilization tool when monetary policy is constrained.

Wage Bargaining Coordination, Taxation and Labor Costs: The Effects of Fiscal Devaluation

Wage Bargaining Coordination, Taxation and Labor Costs: The Effects of Fiscal Devaluation

Fiscal Devaluation with Endogenous Markups: Productivity and Welfare*

AbstractWe study fiscal devaluation (i.e., revenue‐neutral shift from payroll to consumption tax) in a two‐country model of international trade. We analyze how such a policy modifies competition between heterogeneous producers, endogenous markups, and the allocation of inputs. We show that fiscal devaluation increases (resp. decreases) consumption in the net importing (resp. net exporting) country, regardless of which country implements the policy. Numerical illustrations suggest that fiscal devaluation is a deflationary policy. In most cases, input resources are reallocated to less productive firms, partly because of the deformation of the profit structure along the distribution of productivity.

Fiscal devaluation and labor market frictions in a monetary union

We evaluate the macroeconomic and labor market impact of a fiscal devaluation in one region of a monetary union. We simulate a monetary-union model of the euro area (EA) and the world economy featuring search-and-matching labor markets. We obtain the following results. First, a region-specific devaluation improves trade-competitiveness, macroeconomic conditions, and employment. Second, a permanent regional fiscal devaluation has more expansionary labor-intensive effects than lowering the capital income tax rate and increasing the consumption tax rate. Third, simultaneous EA-wide and world-wide fiscal devaluations have expansionary effects on macroeconomic and labor market conditions. Fourth, a EA accommodative monetary policy enhances the expansionary effects of the EA-wide fiscal devaluation on the generic Member State; to the opposite, the Member State faces lower economic activity and employment if the world-wide fiscal devaluation is accompanied by an accommodative monetary stance outside the EA.

Del crecimiento con crisis a la crisis de crecimiento, 1315-1516. La gran depresión bajomedieval y la economía catalana

Después de tres centurias de revolución comercial y progreso manufacturero durante la anomalía climática medieval, el Mediterráneo experimentó un período de carestía alimentaria, intensificación bélica y virulentos brotes de peste durante el siglo XIV, coincidiendo con el mínimo de Wolf de irradiación solar. Su efecto combinado hizo caer la población, la producción agraria e industrial, el comercio, la renta de la tierra y los ingresos fiscales, y aumentar los rendimientos agrarios, los salarios, el endeudamiento señorial y los conflictos distributivos. Pese a las pronunciadas perturbaciones, Barcelona y su hinterland, el Principado de Cataluña, siguieron creciendo y desarrollando su capacidad industrial hasta inicios del Cuatrocientos, mientras se ensayaban nuevas vías de intervención gubernamental: reformas tributarias, devaluaciones, proteccionismo y banca pública. Por el contrario, durante la mayor parte del siglo XV, Cataluña experimentó una inequívoca gran depresión, coincidiendo con otro mínimo de irradiación solar, el de Spörer. Los costes de la aventura imperialista napolitana ahondaron la brecha social e institucional. La reacción de la nobleza catalana y la intransigencia de la oligarquía barcelonesa ante las propuestas reformistas acabaron en guerra total, con consecuencias duraderas para el desarrollo a largo plazo. Barcelona, que había seguido la estela de Venecia, Génova y Florencia con relativo éxito, quedó rezagada durante 1462-1516. Aunque el nivel de vida de algunas fracciones del campesinado pudiera mejorar a finales del siglo xv y algunos comerciantes hacer negocio con azúcar y esclavos en el Atlántico, no compensaron los costes del declive comercial en el Mediterráneo y la pérdida de mercados para las manufacturas catalanas.

Fiscal devaluation and relative prices: evidence from the Euro area

The theoretical literature has long recognized that a fiscal devaluation, brought about by a budget-neutral shift from social security contributions towards value added tax (V-FD), could improve price competitiveness and help restore trade imbalances, especially for countries that cannot devaluate their currency. This paper provides evidence on the effects of a fiscal devaluation on the real effective exchange rate, the terms of trade and net exports. We focus on countries that joined the Euro Area in 1999 for which fiscal devaluation is a salient issue. We find that the responses are highly heterogeneous across countries and, on average, the estimates provide only a weak support to the theoretical predictions that a fiscal devaluation could affect the real effective exchange rate and the terms of trade. Consistently, we also find negligible results on the trade balance. We conclude that the potential of a V-FD should not be overemphasized, since its effects are rather limited on both relative prices and quantities.

The Distributional Implications of Fiscal Devaluations

This paper explores the distributional implications of a fiscal devaluation acquired through a shift from labor to consumption taxes in an open-economy Heterogeneous Agents New Keynesian model with incomplete markets and uninsurable income risk. A permanent fiscal devaluation perfectly mimicking a nominal devaluation in aggregate implies an increase in transfers balanced by lower profits. This leaves the representative agent unaffected. However, as the higher transfers affect all agents symmetrically, while decreased profits impact agents according to their wealth, distributional effects arise. The implicit insurance provided by higher transfers benefits wealth-poor agents and mitigates the equity concerns associated with fiscal devaluations.

Fiscal devaluation and net export: dynamic panel data analysis on the Euro Area

ABSTRACT This study examined whether the fiscal devaluation affected the net export balance in the short and long term by using a dynamic panel data model in the period range between 1995 and 2018 for the Eurozone countries. According to the results of the study, fiscal devaluation improves the net export balance in the short and long term. However, it should be noted that the improvement in long-term net export balance is stronger than other empirical studies.

Austerity versus pragmatism: a comparison of Latvian and Polish economic policies during the great recession and their consequences ten years later

ABSTRACTDespite many initial similarities, Latvia and Poland represent two opposite extremes in terms of practical and theoretical approaches to the economic crisis. The Polish government applied a ‘pragmatic’ approach to fight the recession, based on expansionary fiscal policies and currency devaluation. Conversely, the Latvian administration opted for the Austerity and internal devaluation strategy. Consequently, the objective of this paper is to analyze, from the perspective of political economy, the strategies chosen for the economic crisis management and their effects in Latvia and Poland, in light of the main EU narratives about its causes and responses. The research contends that the economic performance of both countries during the crisis was due to their respective economic structures. On the one hand, Poland is a bigger, more diversified and industrialized economy, with fewer channels of vulnerability and could apply expansionary policies effectively. On the contrary, the economic model established in Latvia generated a high exposure to external shocks, in particular, with a double vulnerability in the banking sector. In this context, due to internal and external motives, the Latvian government decided to apply the austerity and internal devaluation strategy, worsening the economic decline and the subsequent recovery.

Fiscal devaluation and economic activity in the EU

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, a fiscal devaluation (hereafter, FD), understood as a shift in taxation from labour to consumption, has been debated as a possible tool for restoring competitiveness, particularly in peripheral countries of the Eurozone. We contribute to this debate. Based on a set of panel and spatial panel models for the EU 27 over the period 1995–2014, we find that FD works, especially where economic activity is heavily subdued and in sectors more exposed on external competition. FD increases value added in exports, improves net exports, accelerates GDP and employment growth, and decelerates growth in labour costs. These effects are nonlinear; they are stronger in the members of the Eurozone and weaker in countries with either more coordinated or more centralised wage bargaining processes or more generous unemployment benefits. The magnitude of these effects is dampened by strict regulatory barriers: they are weaker in countries with higher barriers to entrepreneurship, trade and investment. Most importantly, FD is not a beggar thy neighbour policy, at least in the EU. In our sample, the aggregate demand (‘cooperative’) effect of unilateral FD, which is beneficial for neighbouring countries, outweighs by far the expenditure switching (‘competitive’) effect, which comes at the expense of other countries’ competitiveness. FD implemented in one country can benefit other countries, provided that they are strongly integrated in global value chains. These findings are robust to changes in the estimation methods, the sample composition, the set of explanatory variables and the selection of a spatial weight matrix.

The Hypothesis of Fiscal Devaluation in Developing Countries: The Case of Gabon

In the absence of adjustment by exchange rates, it is suggested that the effects of a devaluation of the exchange rate through taxation be produced.The purpose of our study is thus to examine the plausibility of such an option in developing countries participating in a monetary union. From a normative perspective, we proceed to an empirical highlighting of the mechanism of classic fiscal devaluation, thanks to the estimation of a model with threshold effects on the data of the Gabonese economy.As a result, the option of fiscal devaluation is conceivable for Gabon. But, its effects would be small.

Optimal fiscal substitutes for the exchange rate in monetary unions

This paper studies optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a New Keynesian 2-country open economy framework, which is used to assess how far fiscal policy can substitute for the role of nominal exchange rates within a monetary union. Giving up exchange rate flexibility leads to welfare costs that depend significantly on whether the law of one price holds internationally or whether firms can engage in pricing-to-market. Calibrated to the euro area, the welfare costs can be reduced by 86% in the former and by 69% in the latter case by using only one tax instrument per country. Fiscal devaluations can be observed as an optimal policy in a monetary union: if a nominal devaluation of the domestic currency were optimal under flexible exchange rates, optimal fiscal policy in a monetary union is an increase of the domestic relative to the foreign value added tax.

Fiscal Devaluation in a Small Open Economy

Fiscal devaluation, meaning a shift from payroll to indirect taxes, can be beneficial for a small open economy such as the Czech Republic. Using a structural fiscal DSGE model, I show that fiscal devaluation can boost real GDP growth by 0.5 percentage points in the first year, when a budget-neutral tax shift of the magnitude of 1% of GDP occurs from direct taxes to consumption tax. I also calculate fiscal multipliers for several revenue and expenditure categories of the government budget, the largest of which (after the first year) are government consumption (0.6), government investment (0.5), and social security contributions paid by employers (0.4). These results corroborate the hypothesis that the government can easily boost the economy by adjusting fiscal instruments appropriately.

Fiscal devaluation and real exchange rates in the Euro area: Some econometric insights

AbstractWe explore whether a fiscal devaluation, that is, a reduction in employers’ social security contributions and an increase in value added tax, affects two indicators of bilateral real exchange rates in the euro area: one based on unit labor costs, and another based on consumer prices. We find that, in the short term, cuts in employers’ contributions depreciate real exchange rates based on unit labor costs, while value added tax hikes appreciate real exchange rates based on consumer prices. In the long run, a value added tax increase also appreciates the real exchange rates based on unit labor costs.

Cutting the Labor Tax Wedge in Hard Times. Evidence from an Italian Reform

As the first step of a strategy aimed at implementing a fiscal devaluation, in 2007, the Italian government implemented a reform reducing the labor tax wedge to boost firms' competitiveness. In this paper, we provide evidence on the causal impact on employment of this reform by estimating a DDD model that exploits differences across geographical areas and sectors of economic activity in the tax allowances. We find mildly positive effects of the reform on employment. We interpret this result by observing that the magnitude of the tax incentive was too small for firms to substantially increase the number of workers.

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Composition of trade flows and the effectiveness of fiscal devaluation

AbstractWe empirically explore whether the magnitude of the effects of fiscal devaluation, which consists of reducing the employers’ social security contribution rate and increasing the value‐added tax rate, depends on the composition of trade flows. Our sample comprises data on bilateral balances of trade between 28 European Union (EU) Member States and their main EU trade partners over the 2000–14 period. We use robust ordinary least squares regressions, controlling for the country‐pair and time fixed effects, to test whether there are differences in the sizes of relationships between these taxation forms and bilateral trade balances for different types of goods, by distinguishing between: (i) consumer, intermediate and capital goods; and (ii) labour and capital‐intensive goods. Our results show that the overall effectiveness of fiscal devaluation depends on the composition of trade flows. Value‐added tax is more strongly (positively) associated with (bilateral) balances of trade in consumer goods, compared to balances of trade in capital and intermediate goods. The employers’ contribution rate, in contrast, is more tightly (negatively) related to balances of trade in capital goods. The latter finding also holds true for trade balances of labour‐intensive goods compared to balances of capital‐intensive goods.

ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF FISCAL DEVALUATIONS IN A MONETARY UNION

This paper examines the effects of fiscal devaluations in a model of a monetary union characterized by national fiscal policies and supranational monetary policy. We show that a revenue-neutral permanent tax shift in one country, which raises its consumption tax to finance a cut to labor taxes, increases welfare of the monetary union in the long run. The distribution of gains among countries depends on their degree of financial integration. We also document that price rigidities result in short-run welfare costs.