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NONLINEAR GROWTH EFFECTS OF TAXATION: A SEMI‐PARAMETRIC APPROACH USING AVERAGE MARGINAL TAX RATES
Author(s) -
Arin K. Peren,
Berlemann Michael,
Koray Faik,
Kuhlenkasper Torben
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of applied econometrics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.878
H-Index - 99
eISSN - 1099-1255
pISSN - 0883-7252
DOI - 10.1002/jae.2311
Subject(s) - economics , tax rate , econometrics , value added tax , panel data , tax reform , indirect tax , macroeconomics , public economics
SUMMARY One of the major challenges of empirical tax research is the identification and calculation of appropriate tax data. While there is consensus that average marginal tax rates are most suitable for studying the effects of tax policy on economic growth, because of data limitations the calculation of marginal tax rates has been limited to the USA and the UK. This paper provides calculations of average marginal tax rates for the four Scandinavian countries using the methodologies of Seater (1982, 1985) and Barro and Sahasakul (1983, 1986). Then, by pooling the newly calculated tax rates for the Scandinavian countries with the data for the USA and the UK, we investigate the effects of tax policy shocks on the per capita GDP growth rate. Our results suggest that an increase in average marginal tax rates has a negative impact on economic growth. Employing additive mixed panel models with penalized splines as estimation approach, we show that changes in tax rates have nonlinear effects. Increasing average marginal tax rates turn out to be the most distorting at relatively moderate tax rates. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.