IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dlw/wpaper/03-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is a Tax Rebate an Effective Tool for Combating a Recession?: A Reply to Shapiro and Slemrod

Author

Listed:
  • Laurence S. Seidman

    (Department of Economics,University of Delaware)

  • Kenneth A. Lewis

    (Department of Economics, University of Delaware)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reply to Shapiro and Slemrod's recent article in the American Economic Review (March 2003) and address the broader issue: Is a tax rebate an effective tool for combating a recession? We make three points. First, there are serious problems with their consumer surveys. Second, they do not obtain any direct evidence on the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of the rebate. Third, even if their survey results were valid, simulations show that a tax rebate twice as large repeated for four quarters would have significantly mitigated the 2001 recession. Thus, their negative conclusion about the effectiveness of counter-cyclical fiscal policy is unwarranted.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurence S. Seidman & Kenneth A. Lewis, 2003. "Is a Tax Rebate an Effective Tool for Combating a Recession?: A Reply to Shapiro and Slemrod," Working Papers 03-15, University of Delaware, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:dlw:wpaper:03-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://graduate.lerner.udel.edu/sites/default/files/ECON/PDFs/RePEc/dlw/WorkingPapers/2003/UDWP2003-15.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:rus:hseeco:95340 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. N. Gregory Mankiw, 2000. "The Savers-Spenders Theory of Fiscal Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 120-125, May.
    3. Seidman, Laurence S & Lewis, Kenneth A, 2002. "A New Design for Automatic Fiscal Policy," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(2), pages 251-284, Summer.
    4. Shapiro, Matthew D & Slemrod, Joel, 1995. "Consumer Response to the Timing of Income: Evidence from a Change in Tax Withholding," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 274-283, March.
    5. Souleles, Nicholas S., 2002. "Consumer response to the Reagan tax cuts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 99-120, July.
    6. Matthew D. Shapiro & Joel Slemrod, 2003. "Consumer Response to Tax Rebates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 381-396, March.
    7. Laurence S. Seidman & Kenneth A. Lewis, 2002. "A New Design for Automatic Fiscal Policy," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(2), pages 251-284.
    8. Nicholas S. Souleles, 1999. "The Response of Household Consumption to Income Tax Refunds," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 947-958, September.
    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. Meissner, Thomas & Rostam-Afschar, Davud, 2017. "Learning Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 273-288.
    2. Laurence S. Seidman & Kenneth A. Lewis, 2004. "Transfers Plus Open-Market Purchases: a Remedy for Recession," Working Papers 04-02, University of Delaware, Department of Economics.
    3. Matthew D. Shapiro & Joel Slemrod, 2003. "Did the 2001 Tax Rebate Stimulate Spending? Evidence from Taxpayer Surveys," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 17, pages 83-110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Campbell, J.R. & Hercowitz, Zvi, 2018. "Liquidity Constraints of the Middle Class (revision of CentER DP 2015-009)," Discussion Paper 2018-039, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    5. Damien Échevin, 2010. "Ricardian or Spender Consumers? Evidence from a Taxpayer Survey Questionnaire," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(2), pages 1526-1538.
    6. Jonathan Heathcote, 2005. "Fiscal Policy with Heterogeneous Agents and Incomplete Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(1), pages 161-188.
    7. Hsieh, Chang-Tai & Shimizutani, Satoshi & Hori, Masahiro, 2010. "Did Japan's shopping coupon program increase spending?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(7-8), pages 523-529, August.
    8. Shimizutani, Satoshi, 2006. "Consumer response to the 1998 tax cut: Is a temporary tax cut effective?," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 269-287, June.
    9. Chambers, Valrie & Spencer, Marilyn, 2008. "Does changing the timing of a yearly individual tax refund change the amount spent vs. saved?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 856-862, December.
    10. Alan S. Blinder, 2004. "The Case Against the Case Against Discretionary Fiscal Policy," Working Papers 102, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    11. Nicholas S. Souleles & Jonathan A. Parker & David S. Johnson, 2006. "Household Expenditure and the Income Tax Rebates of 2001," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1589-1610, December.
    12. Grant Graziani & Wilbert van der Klaauw & Basit Zafar, 2016. "Workers' Spending Response to the 2011 Payroll Tax Cuts," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 124-159, November.
    13. Broda, Christian & Parker, Jonathan A., 2014. "The Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008 and the aggregate demand for consumption," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S), pages 20-36.
    14. Alan J. Auerbach & William G. Gale, 2009. "Activist fiscal policy to stabilize economic activity," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 327-374.
    15. Cheolbeom Park & Thomas Bishop, 2004. "Precautionary Saving, Borrowing Constraints, and Fiscal Policy," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 706, Econometric Society.
    16. Alan S. Blinder, 2004. "The Case Against the Case Against Discretionary Fiscal Policy," Working Papers 102, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    17. Sumit Agarwal & Leslie McGranahan, 2012. "Spending responses to state sales tax holidays," Working Paper Series WP-2012-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    18. Hori, Masahiro & Shimizutani, Satoshi, 2012. "Do households smooth expenditure over anticipated income changes? Evidence from bonus payments to public employees in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 405-433.
    19. repec:pri:cepsud:100blinder is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Scholnick, Barry, 2009. "Credit card use after the final mortgage payment: does the magnitude of income shocks matter?," Working Paper Series 1142, European Central Bank.
    21. Bernd Hayo & Matthias Uhl, 2017. "Taxation and consumption: evidence from a representative survey of the German population," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(53), pages 5477-5490, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Recession; Counter-Cyclical Fiscal Policy; Tax Rebate;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory

    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:dlw:wpaper:03-15. 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: Saul Hoffman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deudeus.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.