IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v50y2018i19p2156-2170.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Top marginal taxation and economic growth

Author

Listed:
  • Santo Milasi
  • Robert J. Waldmann

Abstract

The article explores the relationship between top marginal tax rates on personal income and economic growth. Using a data set of consistently measured top marginal tax rates for a panel of 18 OECD countries over the period 1965–2009, this article finds evidence in favour of a quadratic top tax–growth relationship. This represents the first reported evidence of a nonmonotonic significant relationship between top marginal income tax rates and economic growth. The point estimates of the regressions suggest that the marginal effect of higher top tax rates becomes negative above a growth-maximizing tax rate in the order of 60%. As top marginal tax rates observed after 1980 are below the estimated growth-maximizing level in most of the countries considered, a positive linear relationship between top marginal tax rates and GDP growth is found over the sub-period 1980–2009. Overall, results show that raising top marginal tax rates which are below their growth maximizing has the largest positive impact on growth when the related additional revenues are used to finance productive public expenditure, reduce budget deficits or reduce some other form of distortionary taxation.

Suggested Citation

  • Santo Milasi & Robert J. Waldmann, 2018. "Top marginal taxation and economic growth," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(19), pages 2156-2170, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:50:y:2018:i:19:p:2156-2170
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2017.1392001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2017.1392001
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2017.1392001?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rudra P. Pradhan & Mak B. Arvin & Mahendhiran S. Nair & John H. Hall, 2022. "The dynamics between financial market development, taxation propensity, and economic growth: a study of OECD and non-OECD countries," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 1503-1534, June.
    2. Nazila Alinaghi & W. Robert Reed, 2021. "Taxes and Economic Growth in OECD Countries: A Meta-analysis," Public Finance Review, , vol. 49(1), pages 3-40, January.
    3. Sturn, Simon & Epstein, Gerald, 2021. "How much should we trust five-year averaging to purge business cycle effects? A reassessment of the finance-growth and capital accumulation-unemployment nexus," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 242-256.
    4. Nga Phan Thi Hang & My-Linh Thi Nguyen & Tung Duy Thai & Toan Ngoc Bui, 2020. "The Optimal Threshold of Tax Revenue for Economic Growth: An Investigation into the ASEAN 5+1 Countries," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(4), pages 422-434.

    More about this item

    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:taf:applec:v:50:y:2018:i:19:p:2156-2170. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    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.