IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedlwp/2011-031.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Policy and welfare effects of within-period commitment

Author

Listed:
  • Fernando M. Martin

Abstract

I study the implications of different institutional frameworks for the conduct of fiscal policy, under the assumption that the government cannot commit to future policy choices. The environments analyzed vary on whether the government is endowed with the ability to commit to beginning-of-period policy announcements or not. If it cannot, then there are two variants, depending on which actions private agents take before observing the government’s policy choice. How the three possible cases rank in terms of tax rates and welfare varies substantially with the economy’s fundamentals and whether depreciation is tax deductible or not. More generally, I find that regimes with higher tax rates do not necessarily imply lower welfare. I also find that making depreciation not tax-deductible typically involves a welfare loss. Within the context of the environments studied in this paper, I find that there are only small gains from modifying the way fiscal policy is conducted in modern developed economies. Furthermore, some reforms may lead to large welfare losses.

Suggested Citation

  • Fernando M. Martin, 2011. "Policy and welfare effects of within-period commitment," Working Papers 2011-031, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2011-031
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2011/2011-031.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fernando Martin, 2009. "A Positive Theory of Government Debt," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(4), pages 608-631, October.
    2. Martin, Fernando M., 2011. "On the joint determination of fiscal and monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 132-145, March.
    3. Salvador Ortigueira & Joana Pereira, 2007. "Markov-Perfect Optimal Fiscal Policy: The Case of Unbalanced Budgets," Economics Working Papers ECO2007/41, European University Institute.
    4. Jan-Ting Guo & Kevin J. Lansing, 1997. "Tax structure and welfare in a model of optimal fiscal policy," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Q I, pages 11-23.
    5. Salvador Ortigueira, 2006. "Markov-Perfect Optimal Taxation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(1), pages 153-178, January.
    6. Pecorino, Paul, 1993. "Tax structure and growth in a model with human capital," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 251-271, September.
    7. Christopher Phelan & Ennio Stacchetti, 2001. "Sequential Equilibria in a Ramsey Tax Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(6), pages 1491-1518, November.
    8. Guo, Jang-Ting & Lansing, Kevin J., 1999. "Optimal taxation of capital income with imperfectly competitive product markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 23(7), pages 967-995, June.
    9. Martin, Fernando M., 2010. "Markov-perfect capital and labor taxes," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 503-521, March.
    10. Azzimonti, Marina & Sarte, Pierre-Daniel & Soares, Jorge, 2009. "Distortionary taxes and public investment when government promises are not enforceable," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(9), pages 1662-1681, September.
    11. Daniel Cohen & Philippe Michel, 1988. "How Should Control Theory Be Used to Calculate a Time-Consistent Government Policy?," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 55(2), pages 263-274.
    12. David R. Stockman, 2001. "Balanced-Budget Rules: Welfare Loss and Optimal Policies," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 4(2), pages 438-459, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Marina Azzimonti, 2016. "The Politics of FDI Expropriation," NBER Working Papers 22705, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fiscal policy ; Welfare ; Equilibrium (Economics);

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedlwp:2011-031. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Kathy Cosgrove). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.