Suchergebnisse

Includes bibliographical references and index ; This book has been written to explain some of the fundamental issues of public administration to a wide audience. The author, Emeritus Professor and former head of the Department of Political Science at The University of Hong Kong, has had many years experience in the study and teaching of public administration in both European and African states (in the 50s and 60s) and Asia (in the 70s and 80s) ; published_or_final_version

In this reply to a comment by Jentsch and Lunsford, we show that the evidence for economic and statistically significant macroeconomic effects of tax changes in Mertens and Ravn (2013) remains present for a range of asymptotically valid inference methods. (JEL E23, E62, H24, H25, H31, H32)

Die Grenzabgabenbelastung ist eine relevante Größe für die Einkommenserzielung und die Entscheidung, ob und in welchem zeitlichen Umfang die eigene Arbeitskraft auf dem Arbeits-markt angeboten wird. Bei Beschäftigten, die keine Sozialtransfers beziehen, hängt die margi-nale Belastung sowohl von der Einkommensteuer und dem Solidaritätszuschlag als auch von den Beiträgen zur gesetzlichen Sozialversicherung ab. Je höher die Grenzbelastung ausfällt, desto weniger bleibt vom zusätzlichen Bruttoeinkommen netto übrig. Daher reduzieren hohe Grenzbelastungen nicht nur die Bereitschaft Arbeit aufzunehmen, sondern verhindern tenden-ziell auch eine Ausdehnung der Arbeitszeit. Ein historischer Vergleich der Grenzabgabenkurven der Jahre 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 und 2019 zeigt, dass mit der Steuerreform 2000 der damaligen rot-grünen Regierung die Grenzbe-lastungen über fast den gesamten Einkommensbereich deutlich gesenkt wurden. Hinzu kamen Reformen zur nachgelagerten Besteuerung der Alterseinkünfte und zur Absetzbarkeit der Krankenversicherungsbeiträge, was einer weiteren signifikanten Senkung der Grenzsteuer-sätze entsprach. Auffällig ist im betrachteten Zeitraum allerdings eine unzureichende Korrek-tur der kalten Progression - sowohl im engeren Sinne ('nur' Inflation) als auch im weiteren Sinne (nominales Lohnwachstum). Dies hat dazu geführt, dass im Jahr 2019 vor allem im unte-ren Einkommensbereich die Grenzsteuerbelastung für Singles früher beginnt und steiler an-steigt. Bei Lohneinkommen oberhalb der Midi-Job-Grenze steigt die Grenzbelastung rasant an und erreicht bereits bei einem Einkommen von etwas über 20.000 Euro - das entspricht an-nähernd dem Bruttoverdienst eines zum Mindestlohn angestellten Vollzeitbeschäftigten - ein vorläufiges Maximum von fast 48 Prozent. Auffällig bei der Betrachtung der Grenzbelastungskurven sind verschiedene Sprungstellen oder Knicke. Im unteren Lohnbereich resultiert der Knick aus dem Übergang vom Mini- zum Midi-Job oder zu einer regulären sozialversicherungspflichtigen Beschäftigung. Hinzu kommt die Freigrenze für den Solidaritätszuschlag im Bereich eines Mindestlohn-Empfängers. Im weiteren Verlauf ist die Sozialversicherung für die Sprungstellen verantwortlich, die allerdings über die (Teilhabe-)Äquivalenz von Leistungsansprüchen grundsätzlich ihre Berechtigung haben, auch wenn dadurch ein linear-progressiver Verlauf der Grenzbelastung verhindert wird. Neben ei-ner allgemeinen Senkung der Grenzabgabenbelastung zur Stärkung von Arbeitsanreizen, die zu relativ hohen Einnahmeausfällen führen würde, wäre die Abmilderung der genannten Sprung-stellen eine mögliche Handlungsoption. ; The marginal tax burden is highly relevant for the labour-supply decision of single households. For employees who do not receive any social transfers, the marginal tax burden depends on income tax and solidarity surcharge as well as social security contributions. The higher the mar-ginal tax burden, the less is the net amount of an additional gross income. Therefore, high mar-ginal burdens not only reduce the willingness to take up work but might also prevent an exten-sion of working hours. A historical comparison of the marginal tax burden on wages in Germany for the years 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2019 shows that the tax reform of 2000 significantly reduced the marginal tax burden over almost the entire income range. In addition, there were reforms to the subse-quent taxation of retirement income and the deductibility of health insurance contributions, which corresponded to a further significant reduction in marginal tax rates. In the period under consideration, however, there is an insufficient correction of the 'cold progression' - both in a narrow sense ("only" inflation) and in a wide sense (nominal wage growth). As a result, espe-cially for lower income brackets the tax threshold for singles starts earlier and increases steeply. For incomes above the midi-job threshold, the marginal burden increases rapidly and reaches a maximum of almost 48 percent for an income of about 20,000 euros - which is roughly equiva-lent to the gross earnings of a full-time employee working for the minimum wage. Various discontinuities or kinks are a striking observation for all years considered. In the lower income range, a kink results from the transition from a mini-job to a midi-job or to a regular employment subject to social security contributions. In addition, there is a tax allowance for the solidarity surcharge in the income bracket of employees working full-time for the minimum wage. Further, the income threshold for the assessment of social security contributions is re-sponsible for the discontinuities with respect to income above the average. Even if these dis-continuities are not desirable from a tax perspective as they prevent a linear progressive tax rate, they can be justified by referring to the insurance principle of social contributions. There-fore, since a general reduction of the marginal tax burden to strengthen work incentives would be associated with relatively high revenue shortfalls, an additional option would be to extenuate the discontinuities.

This study evaluates the tax planning behavior of married couples with regard to the allocation of tax schedules between spouses in the context of the German income tax splitting. The focus lies on the disparities between East and West German couples. The assumption is that the tax planning behavior of married couples in Germany depends on different reference points referring to the theory by Tversky and Kahneman (1991). The analysis utilizes administrative data from statistics on German income tax returns for the year 2004 (FAST 2004). The result of an alternative specific conditional logit estimation indicates that West German couples are substantially more likely to choose different tax schedules than East Germans (between 17.6 and 19.1 percentage points). West Germans are more likely to allocate the advantageous tax bracket to the husband instead of the wife. Further logit and OLS estimations as well as a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition support these findings. The conclusion of this analysis is that tax planning behavior of married couples is influenced by the differences in the socialization of people, caused by the fact that before 1990, East Germany had different tax institutions and political regimes compared to West Germany.

Transfers have recently become the most important fiscal policy tool of the U.S. Government. Moreover, within the transfer category, refundable tax credits have reached the same magnitude as unemployment insurance, yet little research documents the macroeconomic implications of tax credits. The existing literature on the effect of tax credits, abstract from behavioral responses to policy changes and are silent on potential general equilibrium effects. This paper fills this gap by addressing these two shortcomings of the existing literature, by modeling the Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC) in an infinite horizon economy with exogenously incomplete asset markets and heterogeneous agents. In particular, we assess the welfare effects of the EITC and analyze how effective targeted transfers are in alleviating distortions arising from incomplete financial markets, and contribute to the debate on labor supply responses to EITC. We also conduct two policy exercises. First, we evaluate the impact of a more generous targeted transfer program on welfare and aggregate outcomes, and thereby uncover the distributional properties of this fiscal policy tool. Secondly, we assess whether targeted transfers are a better policy tool than lump sum transfers and show that targeted transfers are indeed welfare enhancing as they achieve more redistribution at lower tax rates, but that they lead to a less efficient production at the aggregate level.

This paper studies the impact of the state-dependent risk of a government default on the correlation of the scal balance and current account. We use a small open economy model where nonlinear risk premia arise endogenously when the government operates close to its scal limit, i.e. the maximum capacity of a country to repay its debt. The presence of the possible sovereign default leads to dynamics of sovereign debt which cause taxes to rise and increase the dispersion of resulting tax levels. In line with data for industrialized countries household saving increases at high debt-to-GDP levels and the correlation of the scal balance and current account decreases. We calibrate the model to Greece and simulate the debt crisis as a result of negative TFP shocks and nd that the model dynamics t to the data.

Germany has the lowest birth rate among all OECD countries. To encourage fertility, the federal government has recently introduced a set of reforms that led to a substantial expansion of public child care for under three year old children. Using administrative county-level data, we exploit within-county variation in this expansion and find evidence that the provision of public child care causes an increase in birth rates. Extended empirical specifications suggest that our results are neither confounded by selective migration nor driven by tempo effects. Our analysis therefore provides some first evidence that low fertility may be reversed through changes in public policy that allow women to combine employment and motherhood.

We examine subsidies for health care when consumers have present-biased preferences, which lead them to underestimate the effect of today s consumption on future health. We compare immediate subsidies paid for health-conscious consumption and future subsidies rewarding a good health outcome. We show that, while both policies can implement the first best choice, doing so by future subsidies results in higher costs for the government. This arises since the individual anticipates that, from today s perspective, she will make biased use of future subsidies. Hence, in order to create the same incentive effect, a future subsidy must be higher in present value terms.

One central lesson of the sovereign debt crisis is that the Eurozone (and the EU) needs institutional reform. Many observers argue that the monetary union should be complemented by a fiscal union . In this paper we provide the first quantitative analysis of important economic effects of an EU income tax. Using the European tax-benefit calculator EUROMOD, we simulate detailed individual budget curves in order to estimate an average EU tax system . Three key issues are analyzed: firstly, we assess the direct distributional implications of an EU tax (partly) replacing national tax systems. Applying different voting schemes, we especially investigate whether such a step could find political support in each country and the EU as a whole. Secondly, by using behavioral simulation techniques we analyze the impact of introducing a common tax on economic efficiency and adjust the distributional effects accordingly. Thirdly, we investigate the potential of an EU income tax to act as an automatic fiscal stabilizer in the event of an asymmetric shock. We derive crucial policy implications from our simulation exercise for the reform of the Eurozone and shed some light on a very important set of questions: How would further fiscal integration economically affect different households in the different member states? How would it affect automatic stabilizers in the EU?

Die Europäische Union hat mit "NextGenerationEU" (NGEU) einen Fonds aufgelegt, um die wirtschaftliche Erholung ihrer Mitgliedstaaten während und nach der Corona-Pandemie zu unterstützen. Mit dem Fonds sollen die Kohäsion sowie der grüne und digitale Wandel in Europa befördert werden. Gleichzeitig hat die EU ihre Haushaltsmittel im Rahmen des Mehrjährigen Finanzrahmens 2021 bis 2027 nur leicht erhöht. Die fi nanzielle Unterstützung durch die EU wird positiv bewertet. Allerdings bleibt fraglich, wo die nationalen Prioritäten liegen und ob die gesteckten Ziele tatsächlich strukturelle Veränderungen im Sinne der EU ermöglichen. In jedem Fall verändert NGEU die Finanzarchitektur der EU, da der Fonds über gemeinsame Anleihen fi nanziert werden soll. Welche Folgen dies für die Struktur der EU-Finanzen langfristig haben kann und welche Reformansätze sinnvoll sind, ist Gegenstand der Debatte. ; The European Union has launched the Next Generation EU (NGEU) fund to support the economic recovery of its member states during and after the coronavirus pandemic. The fund aims to promote cohesion and the green and digital transformation in Europe. At the same time, the EU has only slightly increased its budget under the Multiannual Financial Framework 2021 to 2027. The financial support from the EU is assessed positively. However, it remains questionable where the national priorities lie and whether the set goals actually enable structural changes in the EU. In any case, NGEU changes the financial architecture of the EU, as the fund is to be financed through common bonds. What consequences this may have for the structure of EU finances in the long term and which reform approaches make sense is the subject of debate.