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Over the last century, there has been a dramatic change in both the composition and the structure of the Irish tax system. In this paper, we construct a new dataset of tax rates and tax bands for the main tax headings in Ireland, from 1920-2019. We document these changes and trends in tax policy in the aggregate and using the main tax headings. One striking regularity, however, is that Irish tax policy has been persistently procyclical. While tax revenues are naturally expected to vary with the cycle, we show that changes in tax rates have been conducted procyclically. Most notably, we find strong evidence that governments have tended to adjust the rates of income tax in a procyclical manner over the past century. Using an additional tax policy changes dataset, we show that discretionary tax measures - which incorporate all tax policy instruments (rates, bands, credits, exemptions, etc.) - have been largely procyclical over the period 1987-2019. These findings are in contrast with other developed countries, where tax policy has tended to be acyclical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a broad overview of published research in The Economic and Social Review (ESR) in the broad area of fiscal policy. It examines the patterns of publications and citations over time, those sub-areas which have seen the highest rate of publication and the nature of the data and techniques employed. The broad pattern which has emerged is that micro policy articles have increased in importance over the years with the availability of better quality data. Macro policy analysis remains important and has often concentrated upon episodes of fiscal crisis. In terms of citations, those papers which have been most heavily cited are overview papers, sometimes delivered by international scholars as invited presentations. There also seems to be a slight bias towards more recent publications with much work from the 1970s and 1980s largely ignored in terms of citations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time since 1913, and as part of the 2017 tax reform, Congress adopted a tax regime that exempts from U.S. taxation dividends from foreign subsidiaries. By doing so, Congress abandoned the general principle that U.S. residents should be subject to tax on all income 'from whatever source derived.' This shift marks a good opportunity for considering the reasons the United States taxed such dividends in the first place. In 1962, Congress enacted 'Subpart-F,' which subjected certain earnings of the foreign subsidiaries of American parent corporations to current-base taxation. This was a deviation from the general tax principle of tax deferral, under which earnings of foreign subsidiaries are taxed only upon repatriation of these earnings. An example of a taxable instance would be by a dividend. The new legislation was the result of political compromise. Although the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) supported a wide-scale elimination of tax deferral, Congress eventually adopted a much narrower law which eliminated tax deferral only in instances where it was abused, such as when deferrals are used to avoid paying otherwise owed U.S. taxes.Seven internal Treasury Department reports found in the archives of Harvard Law School's Law Library reveal the dramatic sequence of events that led to the enactment of Subpart-F, one of the most prominent international tax reforms the United States has ever known. The reports unequivocally support the notion that Subpart-F was initially formed mainly due to the deteriorating U.S. Balance of Payment position, and that its 'original intent,' as designed by its main architect, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Stanley S. Surrey, was to eliminate tax deferral and protect the U.S. tax base. This was based on the principles of equity, efficiency (Capital Export Neutrality), and elegance. Congress, on the other hand, rejected the proposal and adopted a much narrower piece of legislation, mainly due to the concern that eliminating tax deferral would result in a competitive disadvantage to American corporations operating abroad.Based on the reports, as well as the controlling legal and economic concepts of the time, I argue that Congress was mistaken in limiting the original proposal to eliminate tax deferral. This mistake was the result of relying on overly-emphasized and exaggerated competitive concerns, rather than on concrete and sound tax and fiscal policies.Keywords: International Tax, Tax Policy, Tax Reform, Tax Deferral.JEL Classification: D63, E61, E62, F42, H21, H25, H26, K34, 038., I Inrtoduction2018 marks a century of deviation from a very predominant era of tax legislation in the United States. Through the Revenue Act of 1918, the U.S. Congress enacted a [...]

Digitalization has intensified globalization and economic interactivity between countries both developed and developing, increasing the complexity and lack of transparency in economic activities. The increase in digital transactions poses a remarkable challenge for tax authorities yet the digital economy is slowly replacing traditional commercialization and transactions. Conventional international tax legislation has not kept abreast with the growth and complexity of the digital economy and its accompanying challenges with respect to taxation. In view of the infant nature of digital tax legislation in African countries as well as the auspicious possibility of increasing tax revenue to fund public expenditure together with the probability of contradictory outcomes of digital tax policy, through a critical literature review this paper assesses digital taxation through direct digital service taxes (DSTs) in Africa. The findings were mixed. While the possibility of tax revenue maximization and improved economic growth were persuasive, the arguments pointing to negative externalities emanating from poor digital service tax policy design were equally pragmatic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable agricultural economic development is the core task for achieving the objective of rural revitalization strategy in China, which cannot be separated from the support and guidance of fiscal policy, and agricultural industry integration is a key path for the fiscal promotion of sustainable agricultural economic development. This paper systematically examines the interaction mechanism between fiscal agricultural expenditures and sustainable agricultural economic development by using 31 provincial panel data in China from 2008 to 2020 and adopting a two-way fixed effect model, a panel quantile model, and a mediating effect model, respectively. The results show that the impact of fiscal agricultural expenditures on sustainable agricultural economic development is significantly positive, and appears a dynamic increasing trend with the agricultural development stage upgrading. Moreover, heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect of fiscal agricultural expenditures is more obvious for the samples in the central region and with a high share of primary industry. Further, a mediating effect test finds that agricultural industry integration plays a mediating mechanism between fiscal agricultural expenditures and sustainable agricultural economic development. Therefore, this paper proposes constructing a long-term investment mechanism for fiscal agricultural expenditures, formulating differentiated fiscal support policies for agriculture, and prioritizing support for agricultural industry integration, which provides theoretical support and policy inspiration for promoting sustainable agricultural economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use the results of a survey among Slovenian politicians in order to design an objective function for an optimal control problem with a macroeconometric model for fiscal policy in Slovenia that takes account of policy makers' preferences. The paper discusses three different scenarios in which the policy preferences revealed in interviews can be included in the objective functions of the control problems. These objective functions are then used to calculate optimal fiscal policies for the Slovenian economy until 2030. For this purpose, we utilise the macroeconometric model SLOPOL10 and the OPTCON2 algorithm. The results indicate qualitatively similar behaviour of the optimised dynamic system and a better performance (lower values of the loss due to deviation from "ideal" paths) from a ranking-based approach than from an ad-hoc assumption of policy makers' preferences. We sketch how to integrate the approach in a decision-support system for macroeconomic policy design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the most important macroeconomic regulation methods, fiscal and tax policy is supposed to play an active role in green economic transformation. Industrial structure optimization is a fundamental approach to address environmental problems, which has been fully demonstrated in the current studies. It is necessary to identify whether the fiscal and tax policy can promote the green economic transition through optimizing industrial structure. Taking property tax policy as an example, this paper investigates whether fiscal and tax policy promotes the green transformation of the urban economy from the perspective of industrial structure upgrading. The results show that the fiscal and tax policy implemented for a certain industry has a significant positive spillover effect on the optimization of the city's overall industrial structure. Scientific and reasonable fiscal and tax policy accelerates the intensive development of urban economy by promoting the upgrading of urban industry. These findings suggest that in terms of cities in the new and old kinetic energy transformation period, government should consider the upgrading of industrial structure in the formulation of fiscal and tax policy and attach great importance to the green development of urban economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides both stylized facts and estimations of the endogenous nexus of the financial fragility hypothesis (FFH) with public social spending (PSS) for a paradigmatic Eurozone member country. The sample period 1995–2022 includes three major economic crises, the global financial crisis 2007–2009, the European debt crisis 2010–2015 and the COVID-19 pandemic one in 2020–2022. Within the context of the financialization literature, this paper is founded, for the first time, as far as we know, on the "financial fragility hypothesis", combining the effects of both Minsky's "financial instability", as it has been extended for open economies, and the "Eurozone fragility one". Similar to the relevant literature, the findings show that the PSS is associated, in a long-term steady state (cointegration), with the financial fragility process, starting, firstly, from the hedge-financing structure with high profitability of firms, when PSS decreases; secondly, to hyper-speculative financing with risky options, supported by bank credit and openness, indebtedness or discretionary fiscal policy, when PSS rises; thirdly, to the hyper-speculative or even Ponzi financing structures with over-indebtedness (leverage) from the global capital market, inflated asset prices and internationalized fragility, when PSS also rises, and so on. Our conclusion validates Minsky's famous saying, "stability breeds instability", also in the architecturally incomplete Eurozone. Policy implications are straightforward and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the optimal operation of ocean container ships, this paper presents a two-level planning model that takes into account carbon tax policies. This model translates the CO2 emissions of ships into carbon tax costs and aims to minimize the overall operation costs of the ships. In top-level planning, the model considers factors such as speed, cargo load, and energy consumption to establish an objective function and optimization strategy. In bottom-level planning, the model involves ship stability and imposes corresponding constraints. By integrating the two levels of planning, a ship operation optimization model that considers multiple factors is obtained. With practical ocean container ships as cases, through numerical examples and sensitivity analysis, the constraint, stability, and structural feasibility of the constructed model are confirmed. The research results of this paper provide a decision-making basis for optimizing the operation of oceanic container ships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the short- and medium-term effects of high inflation on fiscal developments in Croatia. The main analytical novelty is to add inflation shocks to the fiscal reaction function, an approach that was not considered in macro-fiscal research during the long period of moderate inflation. Our results suggest that inflation has a favourable effect on the primary balance in the short term, which can be explained by the positive effect of inflation on nominal tax revenues and an initial lagged adjustment of public expenditure to inflation. In the medium term, however, inflation is likely to have a negative effect on the primary balance by raising government expenditure more than tax revenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green fiscal policy is crucial for achieving green economic recovery and improving green total factor productivity (GTFP). Based on this, using panel data from 30 regions in China from 2009 to 2020, this paper analyzes the impact of green fiscal policy on GTFP. The results show that: (1) Green fiscal policy can improve GTFP, thus achieving green economic recovery. After a series of robustness tests, the conclusion is still valid; (2) Green fiscal policy can have a stronger improvement effect on GTFP in regions with high levels of both public environmental concerns and economic development; (3) Green fiscal policy mainly improves GTFP by promoting green technology innovation and upgrading industrial structure. These findings not only enrich the literature on green fiscal policy and green recovery but also serve as a reference for governmental departments. The government should promote green technology innovation through green fiscal policy and raise public environmental concerns to help achieve green economic recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the COVID recession and the large fiscal policy response by modelling scenarios using a macro‐econometric model. The COVID recession mainly arose from lower household consumption of certain services under COVID social distancing. The fiscal response to compensate for income losses in those service industries meant that unemployment was around 2 percentage points lower for 3 years than otherwise would have been the case. However, there was over‐compensation: for every $1 of income the private sector lost under COVID, fiscal policy provided $2 of compensation. Following the end of social distancing, the aftereffects of over‐compensation and over‐prolonged loose monetary policy are modelled to have generated excess demand that temporarily added up to 3 percentage points to the annual inflation rate. Also, three forms of over‐compensation in the JobKeeper program that led the fiscal response created disincentive effects and inequities. The primary lesson for future pandemics is that fiscal policy should compensate, but not over‐compensate, for income losses, both in aggregate and at the program level. The secondary lesson is that monetary policy needs to take more account of the stimulus already provided by the fiscal response, so that interest rates do not remain very low for too long. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impossible trinity suggests that an economy cannot simultaneously achieve a fixed exchange rate, high capital mobility, and independent monetary policy without abandoning one of these. However, This paper looks at Indonesia's experiences from the 2009 QE and the 2013 taper tantrum, considering why Indonesian policy-makers were unable to use policies as per the trilemma, and the policy implications of this. There are three possible reasons why Indonesia found it difficult to implement this trilemma policy choice: differing monetary policy objectives, volatile floating exchange rates, and balance sheet effects. The commodity supercycle also plays an exogenous role, unable to be overcome by monetary or exchange rate policy while at the same time impacting fiscal policy, income redistribution, trade balance, and the exchange rate. Overall, this paper argues that monetary policy on its own is likely to be insufficient to manage the economy adequately. Other levers and factors, such as macroprudential policy, fiscal policy, capital flow management, and institutional quality, are critical to make the policy choices more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global financial architecture is struggling to facilitate the sustainable investment needed to address climate change. Some argue that if the Basel III global capital rules treated environmentally friendly assets as being safer forms of capital, banks would be incentivized to hold more of these assets on their balance sheets and extend more green debt, promoting sustainable investment. This paper explores the possible impacts of this reform by combining firm-level environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data with a global general equilibrium model. It finds that the reform would result in a significant reallocation of capital, goods, and services across sectors and economies. It finds that while the reform could significantly increase investment, the investment is not necessarily sustainable and not all countries benefit from cooperation. The paper identifies a range of challenges that need to be overcome for these results to hold, including the reliability of ESG data, inconsistencies in taxonomies and methodologies, and further analysis confirming whether green firms are indeed safer borrowers. The paper argues that the G20 is well placed to address these challenges and outlines an agenda to achieve it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public debt is a key issue for government institutions, both because of the amount of its revenues, which partly compensate for the possible shortfall in tax collection, and because it is an essential instrument of fiscal policy for the government. This paper reviews the literature on the determinants of public debt in order to identify the explanatory variables of public debt according to the main theoretical and empirical studies. This work will support policy makers who have to obtain financial resources to cover essential and very necessary expenditures nowadays, such as health, education, or infrastructure investment, by controlling debt levels and fiscal pressure. The main policy implication we can derive from these results is that governments should use some of these instruments to reduce general government debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the long-run and short-run relationship between money supply and inflation in Pakistan, utilizing annual data spanning from 1981 to 2021. The key objective is to assess the impact of monetary policy, specifically money supply, on inflation dynamics in the country. To achieve this, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach is employed, which is suitable for analyzing cointegration among variables with mixed integration orders. The results reveal both short and long-run cointegration between inflation, money supply, unemployment, and interest rates. Notably, unemployment demonstrates a negative correlation with inflation, while money supply and interest rates exhibit a positive relationship. These findings underscore the importance of dedicated policy measures to manage inflation effectively. The paper concludes by recommending the establishment of a policy implementation body and collaboration between the government and the central bank to ensure financial stability and control inflation through well-calibrated monetary and fiscal policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research background: Unemployment is a huge topic for policymakers, scholars, and, in general, society. Historically, there have always been a lot of discussions about this phenomenon. It is already acknowledged that unemployment is closely related to economic activity: when the economy is growing, more people are employed, and when economic activity is low, employment decreases, and unemployment rises. This relation is well-researched in the framework of Okun's law. However, it is far less known how this relationship holds if international economic relations are introduced. Thus, the motivation for the research was to examine the role of international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) on the growthunemployment nexus. Purpose of the article: To assess how trade and FDI affect growth and gender-, age-, and educational attainment level-specific unemployment relationship and on what scale this effect varies over different business cycle phases. Methods: Scientific literature review, comparative analysis, and panel regression. Findings & value added: Given the lack of research examining what effect FDI and trade have on the growth-unemployment nexus, this paper estimates modified Okun's equation on the European Union (EU) countries (EU-28, by the composition of the EU until 31/01/2020) for the period from 2000 to 2019 while incorporating international aspects that can have an impact on this nexus. Also, this study develops a specification that can be useful to monitor the potentially different effects of FDI and trade on the growth-unemployment nexus during different business cycle phases. The estimations of the panel regression for unemployment disaggregated by age, gender and education level has showed that import, export, inward FDI, and outward FDI have a negative effect on the growth-unemployment nexus. It means that with an increase in the intensity of international economic relations, the influence of gross domestic product (GDP) growth on unemployment becomes less significant. Thus, the effectiveness of expansionary fiscal policy to reduce unemployment becomes less effective in more open economies, which in the case of the EU are the smallest member states with relatively small domestic markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the idea of the functioning of an independent fiscal institution (IFI) in Poland according to the EU's requirements. The first section provides an overall description of the institution. Section 2 provides theoretical insights into possible institutional models of IFIs which are established in the EU: the purpose is to discern what lessons can be learnt from IFI models in other EU countries. Section 3 discusses the legal basis of and standards in this area of public-sector control; section 4 addresses how that adoption would look in Poland. The objective of the article is to determine what the challenges in the Polish state fiscal policy are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper examines the role of institution in the combating crime in India. This study also assesses institutions for controlling property crime in India in the post-reform era. Design/methodology/approach: Crime and socio-economic data are taken from National Crime Record Bureau and the Reserve Bank of India, respectively. Twenty major Indian states are selected for the study purpose for the period of 1994–2019. Fixed effect panel data technique is used for analysis purpose. Findings: Property crime rate declines with economic growth, while it increases with financial development. Findings of fiscal policy instruments are different. Own tax is positively associated with property crime in India, while non-tax fiscal instruments such as fine, penalty, and so on, are inversely related to it. Property crime rate is inversely related to institutional factors like charge sheet and conviction rate. Research limitations/implications: Further research is needed for other crimes in India. State-level data are used here for analysis purpose; however, spatial or cluster analysis techniques might provide more insights for combating crimes in India. Practical implications: This study suggests that economic growth and fiscal instrument along with institutional development are essential to control property crime in India. Social implications: Government should take steps to improve the law-and-order system to control property crime across states. Originality/value: Impact of non-tax fiscal instrument reduces property crime while that of own tax is increases it in India. These findings are unique and added certain insight in the study. Institutional roles are captured its performances like charge sheet and convict rate, which are significantly reduce property crime in Indian states. Least square dummy variable model is applied to capture individual state effects. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0063 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Reiterative Truncated Projected Least Squares to estimate the effects of US monetary and fiscal policy on Australia using quarterly data between 1960 and 2022. When Australia had a fixed exchange rate (1960–1983), both US fiscal and monetary policies were positively correlated with Australia's GDP, which fits the predictions of a small-country IS/LM/BP model with relatively immobile capital. When Australia had a flexible exchange rate (1984–2022), US fiscal policy was positively correlated with Australia's GDP, but US monetary policy was negatively correlated with Australia's GDP, which fits the predictions of a large-country IS/LM/BP model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Portuguese First Republic (1910–1926) was marked by significant instability at the most diverse levels. With a special focus on the financial dimension of this period, the objective of this paper is to test the sustainability of the Portuguese fiscal policy, also referred to as the sustainability of public finances itself. The methodology involves testing the stationarity of public debt and budget balance and also the cointegration between state revenue and expenditure. The results obtained shows that the state's intertemporal budgetary constraint was violated during the First Republic regime, which denotes unsustainability. This conclusion is justified by the existence of a non-stationary budget balance and the absence of cointegration between state revenue and expenditure. These results are manifestly different from those that have already been obtained for other Portuguese regimes, namely for the Estado Novo (1933–1974) and democracy (1974–present), where sustainability existed. This paper is yet another demonstration of how important it is to maintain control of state's accounts. We hope that this paper can be useful to stimulate new research on Portuguese public finances and also on the important issue of fiscal policy sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government debt, as a prime macroeconomic determinant, has a significant impact on the design of fiscal and monetary policy in a country. That is to say, that, with the emergence of the Corona crisis and the energy crisis which caused: 1) interruption of global supply chains, 2) increase in food and energy prices and 3) interruption of the balance of supply and demand, a large number of countries including North Macedonia began to create targeted anticrisis measures that caused the growth of the budget deficit, and as a result of this, the government’s debt increased. What is characteristic about North Macedonia is that the increase of the government’s debt caused the growth of the public debt, whereby it exceeded 60% of the GDP, which also means violation of one of the Maastricht criteria for convergence. The focus of this paper is the determination of the effect of key macroeconomic determinants on the government’s debt of North Macedonia. This research paper is based on secondary data from relevant sources such as the Ministry of Finance and the National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia, the State Statistics Office and the IMF. The multiple linear regression model was applied in the empirical part of the research, in which five variables are incorporated. In this model, the government’s debt, as a percentage of GDP is the dependent variable, and the annual economic growth, the average annual inflation rate, the budget deficit and the annual amount of FDI are independent variables. Based on the results of the research, it can be concluded that the world crisis has a strong impact on the public finances of North Macedonia, and the growth of the budget deficit largely causes the growth of the country's debt by the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inflation that is fully anticipated has few real effects in purely private market economies, but this need not be the case in the presence of taxation. In practice, tax systems are not neutral with respect to inflation - though some countries have attempted make their tax systems inflation-neutral in the past - and this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the most relevant non-neutralities, drawing on existing literature, but also supplying new illustrations and evidence of the effects. The paper shows, for example, how taxing inflationary gains can have a large impact on effective tax rates - even at relatively low rates of inflation. It also shows how partial coverage of protection against inflation - for some types of incomes only - can create additional distortions. A new empirical analysis reveals how the erosion of the value of depreciation allowances through inflation affects investment. Finally, the paper discusses policy options to address such non-neutralities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]