IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v113y2023p377-81.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Tax Increases Tame Inflation?

Author

Listed:
  • James Cloyne
  • Joseba Martinez
  • Haroon Mumtaz
  • Paolo Surico

Abstract

The answer is "yes" for personal income taxes but "no" for corporate income taxes. Using narrative-identified US federal tax changes post-World War II and disaggregated sectoral data on consumer and producer prices, we show that higher average personal income tax rates lower prices across a broad range of sectors, but higher average corporate tax rates do not. There is also significant sectoral heterogeneity in the size of the effects. Finally, only personal tax increases lower inflation expectations, while corporate tax increases lead to persistent declines in stock prices. Our results are consistent with personal taxes affecting aggregate demand and corporate taxes persistently affecting supply conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • James Cloyne & Joseba Martinez & Haroon Mumtaz & Paolo Surico, 2023. "Do Tax Increases Tame Inflation?," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 113, pages 377-381, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:113:y:2023:p:377-81
    DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20231070
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20231070
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E190121V1
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20231070.appx
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20231070.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pandp.20231070?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karel Mertens & Morten O. Ravn, 2013. "The Dynamic Effects of Personal and Corporate Income Tax Changes in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1212-1247, June.
    2. Mumtaz, Haroon & Theodoridis, Konstantinos, 2020. "Fiscal policy shocks and stock prices in the United States," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    3. Baumeister, Christiane & Liu, Philip & Mumtaz, Haroon, 2013. "Changes in the effects of monetary policy on disaggregate price dynamics," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 543-560.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rangan Gupta & Chi Keung Marco Lau & Stephen M. Miller & Mark E. Wohar, 2019. "US Fiscal Policy and Asset Prices: The Role of Partisan Conflict," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 19(4), pages 851-862, December.
    2. Haroon Mumtaz & Katerina Petrova, 2023. "Changing Impact of Shocks: A Time‐Varying Proxy SVAR Approach," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(2-3), pages 635-654, March.
    3. Bernd Hayo & Sascha Mierzwa, 2020. "Stock Market Reactions to Legislated Tax Changes: Evidence from the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202047, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    4. Choi, Sangyup & Shin, Junhyeok & Yoo, Seung Yong, 2022. "Are government spending shocks inflationary at the zero lower bound? New evidence from daily data," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    5. Luca Metelli & Kevin Pallara, 2020. "Fiscal space and the size of the fiscal multiplier," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1293, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    6. Fernando Broner & Daragh Clancy & Aitor Erce & Alberto Martin, 2022. "Fiscal Multipliers and Foreign Holdings of Public Debt [When Should You Adjust Standard Errors for Clustering?]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(3), pages 1155-1204.
    7. Felipe Beltrán & David Coble, 2023. "Monetary Policy Surprises on the Banking Sector: the Role of the Information and Pure Monetary Shocks," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 979, Central Bank of Chile.
    8. Anastasios Evgenidis & Stephanos Papadamou, 2021. "The impact of unconventional monetary policy in the euro area. Structural and scenario analysis from a Bayesian VAR," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 5684-5703, October.
    9. Federico Di Pace & Christoph Görtz, 2021. "Monetary Policy, Sectoral Comovement and the Credit Channel," CESifo Working Paper Series 9142, CESifo.
    10. Hebous, Shafik & Zimmermann, Tom, 2014. "Revisiting the Narrative Approach of Estimating Fiscal Multipliers," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100408, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Emily Anderson & Atsushi Inoue & Barbara Rossi, 2016. "Heterogeneous Consumers and Fiscal Policy Shocks," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(8), pages 1877-1888, December.
    12. Karamysheva, Madina, 2022. "How do fiscal adjustments work? An empirical investigation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    13. Drautzburg, Thorsten & Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Guerrón-Quintana, Pablo, 2021. "Bargaining shocks and aggregate fluctuations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    14. Metiu, Norbert, 2021. "Anticipation effects of protectionist U.S. trade policies," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    15. Davide Brignone & Alessandro Franconi & Marco Mazzali, 2023. "Robust Impulse Responses using External Instruments: the Role of Information," Papers 2307.06145, arXiv.org.
    16. Favero, Carlo A. & Giavazzi, Francesco & Alesina, Alberto & Paradisi, Matteo & Barbiero, Omar, 2017. "The effects of Fiscal Consolidations: Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 12016, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Miescu, Mirela & Rossi, Raffaele, 2021. "COVID-19-induced shocks and uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    18. Sun, Hang & Bos, Jaap W.B. & Li, Zhuo, 2017. "In the Nick of Time: A Heteroskedastic SVAR Model and Its Application to the Crude Oil Futures Market," Research Memorandum 019, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    19. Meissner, Thomas & Rostam-Afschar, Davud, 2017. "Learning Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 273-288.
    20. Bachmann, Rüdiger & Born, Benjamin & Elstner, Steffen & Grimme, Christian, 2019. "Time-varying business volatility and the price setting of firms," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 82-99.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • H32 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Firm

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:113:y:2023:p:377-81. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.