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How Far Are We From the Slippery Slope? The Laffer Curve Revisited

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Author Info
Trabandt, Mathias
Uhlig, Harald

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Abstract

The goal of this paper is to examine the shape of the Laffer curve quantitatively in a simple neoclassical growth model calibrated to the US as well as to the EU-15 economy. We show that the US and the EU-15 area are located on the left side of their labor and capital tax Laffer curves, but the EU-15 economy being much closer to the slippery slopes than the US. Our results indicate that since 1975 the EU-15 area has moved considerably closer to the peaks of their Laffer curves. We find that the slope of the Laffer curve in the EU-15 economy is much flatter than in the US which documents a much higher degree of distortions in the EU-15 area. A dynamic scoring analysis shows that more than one half of a labor tax cut and more than four fifth of a capital tax cut are self-financing in the EU-15 economy.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 5657.

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Date of creation: May 2006
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5657

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Related research
Keywords: Laffer curve; US and EU-15 economy;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E0 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General
E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General
H0 - Public Economics - - General

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(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Sigitas Karpavicius, 2009. "The Effects of Fiscal Instruments on the Economy of Lithuania," Bank of Lithuania Working Paper Series 4, Bank of Lithuania. [Downloadable!]
  2. Eric M. Leeper & Shu-Chun Susan Yang, 2006. "Dynamic Scoring: Alternative Financing Schemes," Caepr Working Papers 2006-022, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Economics Department, Indiana University Bloomington. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Andrew Mountford & Harald Uhlig, 2008. "What are the Effects of Fiscal Policy Shocks?," NBER Working Papers 14551, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Denis Belomestny & Markus Reiß, 2006. "Spectral calibration of exponential Lévy Models [1]," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-034, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Christian Stoltenberg, 2006. "Real Balance Effects, Timing and Equilibrium Determination," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-073, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  6. M Saifur Rahman, 2008. "Should Dynamic Scoring be done with Heterogeneous Agent-Based Models? Challenging the Conventional Wisdom," Caepr Working Papers 2008-023, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Economics Department, Indiana University Bloomington. [Downloadable!]
  7. Alejandro Cuñat & Szabolcs Deák & Marco Maffezzoli, . "Tax Cuts in Open Economies," Working Papers 332, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University. [Downloadable!]
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  8. Kai Detlefsen & Wolfgang Härdle, 2006. "Forecasting the Term Structure of Variance Swaps," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-052, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  9. Andrea Ferrero, 2008. "The advantage of flexible targeting rules," Staff Reports 339, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. [Downloadable!]
  10. Carsten Trenkler & Pentti Saikkonen & Helmut Lütkepohl, 2006. "Testing for the Cointegrating Rank of a VAR Process with Level Shift and Trend Break," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-067, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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  11. Elöd Takáts & Tamás K. Papp, 2008. "Tax Rate Cuts and Tax Compliance--The Laffer Curve Revisited," IMF Working Papers 08/7, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
  12. Ioana Moldovan, 2008. "Countercyclical Fiscal Policy and Cyclical Factor Utilization," Working Papers 2008_15, Department of Economics, University of Glasgow. [Downloadable!]
  13. Matthias Paustian & Christian Stoltenberg, 2006. "Optimal Interest Rate Stabilization in a Basic Sticky-Price Model," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-072, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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  14. Enzo Giacomini & Wolfgang Härdle & Ekaterina Ignatieva & Vladimir Spokoiny, 2006. "Inhomogeneous Dependency Modelling with Time Varying Copulae," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-075, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  15. Bruno Deffains & Dominique Demougin, 2006. "Institutional Competition, Political Process and Holdup," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-027, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  16. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Apostolis Philippopoulos & Vanghelis Vassilatos, 2007. "Rent-seeking competition from state coffers in a calibrated DSGE model of the euro area," Working Papers 2007_29, Department of Economics, University of Glasgow. [Downloadable!]
  17. Dominique Demougin & Anja Schöttner, 2006. "Technological Choice under Organizational Diseconomies of Scale," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-028, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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