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

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Author Info
Mathias Trabandt
Harald Uhlig

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Abstract

We characterize the Laffer curves for labor taxation and capital income taxation quantitatively for the US, the EU-14 and individual European countries by comparing the balanced growth paths of a neoclassical growth model featuring ”constant Frisch elasticity” (CFE) preferences. We derive properties of CFE preferences. We provide new tax rate data. For benchmark parameters, we find that the US can increase tax revenues by 30% by raising labor taxes and 6% by raising capital income taxes. For the EU-14 we obtain 8% and 1%. Denmark and Sweden are on the wrong side of the Laffer curve for capital income taxation.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 15343.

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Date of creation: Sep 2009
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15343

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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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Full references

Cited by:
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  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. Francesco Busato & Bruno Chiarini, 2009. "Steady state Laffer curve with the underground economy," Discussion Papers 2_2009, D.E.S. (Department of Economic Studies), University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy. [Downloadable!]
  7. 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!]
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  9. 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!]
  10. Andrea Ferrero, 2008. "The advantage of flexible targeting rules," Staff Reports 339, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. [Downloadable!]
  11. 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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  15. 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!]
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  17. 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!]
  18. 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!]
  19. Szymon Borak & Wolfgang Härdle & Stefan Trück & Rafal Weron, 2006. "Convenience Yields for CO2 Emission Allowance Futures Contracts," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2006-076, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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