IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/125942.html

Negative rates, demographics and fiscal policy: Heterogeneous tilting taxation in the Euro Area

Author

Listed:
  • Camarero, Mariam
  • Sapena, Juan
  • Tamarit, Cecilio

Abstract

This paper estimates time-varying tax-tilting parameters for eleven EMU member states from 1970 to 2024 using a panel time-varying parameter state-space model that extends the traditional tax-smoothing framework to capture both common and country-specific dynamics. Core countries such as Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Ireland, and Finland display a more prudent fiscal stance, while peripheral countries, including Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, shift taxation toward the future, generating current deficits. These patterns are driven by differences between government discounting of future revenues and market rates, and are further influenced by structural factors such as aging populations and unemployment. Periods of negative real interest rates relax fiscal constraints, encouraging governments to delay tax adjustments. The results underscore the need to reduce cross-country fiscal heterogeneity to strengthen long-term sustainability and advance fiscal integration in the Euro Area.

Suggested Citation

  • Camarero, Mariam & Sapena, Juan & Tamarit, Cecilio, 2025. "Negative rates, demographics and fiscal policy: Heterogeneous tilting taxation in the Euro Area," MPRA Paper 125942, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:125942
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/125942/1/MPRA_paper_125942.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hall, Robert E, 1978. "Stochastic Implications of the Life Cycle-Permanent Income Hypothesis: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(6), pages 971-987, December.
    2. Barro, Robert J, 1980. "Federal Deficit Policy and the Effects of Public Debt Shocks," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 12(4), pages 747-762, November.
    3. Jushan Bai & Josep Lluís Carrion-I-Silvestre, 2009. "Structural Changes, Common Stochastic Trends, and Unit Roots in Panel Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(2), pages 471-501.
    4. Philip Arestis, 2011. "Fiscal Policy Is Still an Effective Instrument of Macroeconomic Policy," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 58(2), pages 143-156, June.
    5. Jean-Bernard Chatelain & Bruno Tinel & Karim Azizi & Nicolas Canry, 2012. "Are the No-Ponzi Game and the Transversality Conditions Relevant for Public Debt? A Keynesian Appraisal," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-00686788, HAL.
    6. Henning Bohn, 1998. "The Behavior of U. S. Public Debt and Deficits," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(3), pages 949-963.
    7. Ángel Ubide, 2019. "Fiscal Policy at the Zero Lower Bound," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 54(5), pages 279-285, September.
    8. Sargan, John Denis & Bhargava, Alok, 1983. "Testing Residuals from Least Squares Regression for Being Generated by the Gaussian Random Walk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 153-174, January.
    9. Moon, H.R.Hyungsik Roger & Perron, Benoit, 2004. "Testing for a unit root in panels with dynamic factors," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 81-126, September.
    10. Mariam Camarero & Juan Sapena & Cecilio Tamarit, 2020. "Modelling Time-Varying Parameters in Panel Data State-Space Frameworks: An Application to the Feldstein–Horioka Puzzle," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 56(1), pages 87-114, June.
    11. Azar, Christian & Sterner, Thomas, 1996. "Discounting and distributional considerations in the context of global warming," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 169-184, November.
    12. Paul Schmelzing, 2020. "Eight centuries of global real interest rates, R-G, and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018," Bank of England working papers 845, Bank of England.
    13. Barro, Robert J, 1979. "On the Determination of the Public Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 940-971, October.
    14. Mendoza, Enrique G. & Ostry, Jonathan D., 2008. "International evidence on fiscal solvency: Is fiscal policy "responsible"?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(6), pages 1081-1093, September.
    15. Perron, P, 1993. "Erratum [The Great Crash, the Oil Price Shock and the Unit Root Hypothesis]," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(1), pages 248-249, January.
    16. Aguiar, Mark & Amador, Manuel, 2016. "Fiscal policy in debt constrained economies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 37-75.
    17. Cho, Dooyeon & Lee, Kyung-woo, 2022. "Population aging and fiscal sustainability: Nonlinear evidence from Europe," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    18. Paredes, Joan & Pedregal, Diego J. & Pérez, Javier J., 2009. "A quarterly fiscal database for the euro area based on intra-annual fiscal information," Working Paper Series 1132, European Central Bank.
    19. Alberto Alesina & Roberto Perotti, 1995. "The Political Economy of Budget Deficits," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 42(1), pages 1-31, March.
    20. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 1998. "Estimating and Testing Linear Models with Multiple Structural Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 47-78, January.
    21. Pastén, Roberto & Cover, James P., 2015. "Tax tilting and politics: Some theory and evidence for Latin America," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 208-218.
    22. Urbschat, Florian, 2018. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Impact of Negative Interest Rates and QE on the Profitability and Risk-Taking of 1600 German Banks," Discussion Papers in Economics 56535, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    23. Paniagua, Jordi & Sapena, Juan & Tamarit, Cecilio, 2017. "Fiscal sustainability in EMU countries: A continued fiscal commitment?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 85-97.
    24. Paniagua, Jordi & Sapena, Juan & Tamarit, Cecilio, 2017. "Sovereign debt spreads in EMU: The time-varying role of fundamentals and market distrust," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 187-206.
    25. Tabellini, Guido & Alesina, Alberto, 1990. "Voting on the Budget Deficit," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 37-49, March.
    26. Cashin, P. & Olekalns, N. & Sahay, R., 1998. "Tax Smoothing in a Financially Repessed Economy: Evidence from India," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 656, The University of Melbourne.
    27. Robert J. Barro, 1981. "On the Predictability of Tax-Rate Changes," NBER Working Papers 0636, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    28. repec:bla:scandj:v:88:y:1986:i:1:p:195-22 is not listed on IDEAS
    29. Tabellini, Guido, 1991. "The Politics of Intergenerational Redistribution," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 335-357, April.
    30. Jushan Bai & Serena Ng, 2002. "Determining the Number of Factors in Approximate Factor Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 191-221, January.
    31. Jushan Bai & Serena Ng, 2004. "A PANIC Attack on Unit Roots and Cointegration," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(4), pages 1127-1177, July.
    32. James D. Hamilton, 2018. "Why You Should Never Use the Hodrick-Prescott Filter," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(5), pages 831-843, December.
    33. Philip Arestis, 2011. "Fiscal Policy Is Still an Effective Instrument of Macroeconomic Policy," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 58(2), pages 143-156.
    34. Ghosh, Atish R, 1995. "Intertemporal Tax-Smoothing and the Government Budget Surplus: Canada and the United States," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(4), pages 1033-1045, November.
    35. Liu, Liqun, 2012. "Inferring the rate of pure time preference under uncertainty," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 27-33.
    36. Robert J. Barro, 1986. "The Behavior of United States Deficits," NBER Chapters, in: The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change, pages 361-394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    37. Lawrence H Summers, 2014. "U.S. Economic Prospects: Secular Stagnation, Hysteresis, and the Zero Lower Bound," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 49(2), pages 65-73, April.
    38. Cukierman, Alex & Meltzer, Allan H, 1989. "A Political Theory of Government Debt and Deficits in a Neo-Ricardian Framework," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 713-732, September.
    39. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Neil R. Mehrotra & Jacob A. Robbins, 2019. "A Model of Secular Stagnation: Theory and Quantitative Evaluation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 1-48, January.
    40. Pierre Yared, 2019. "Rising Government Debt: Causes and Solutions for a Decades-Old Trend," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(2), pages 115-140, Spring.
    41. Booth, Douglas E., 1994. "Ethics and the limits of environmental economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 241-252, April.
    42. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
    43. Cashin, P. & Haque, N. & Olekalns, N., 1999. "Spend Now, Pay Later? Tax Smoothing & Fiscal Sustainability in South Asia," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 700, The University of Melbourne.
    44. Nelson, Charles R. & Plosser, Charles I., 1982. "Trends and random walks in macroeconmic time series : Some evidence and implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 139-162.
    45. Perron, Pierre, 1997. "Further evidence on breaking trend functions in macroeconomic variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 355-385, October.
    46. Sahasakul, Chaipat, 1986. "The U.S. evidence on optimal taxation over time," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 251-275, November.
    47. Karim Azizi & Nicolas Canry & Jean-Bernard Chatelain & Bruno Tinel, 2012. "Are no-Ponzi game and transversality conditions relevant for public debt?," European Journal of Economic and Social Systems, Lavoisier, vol. 25(1-2), pages 45-58.
    48. Thanh Dat Nguyen & Sandy Suardi & Chew Lian Chua, 2017. "The Behavior Of U.S. Public Debt And Deficits During The Global Financial Crisis," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(1), pages 201-215, January.
    49. Mariam Camarero & Juan Sapena & Cecilio Tamarit, 2021. "An Analysis of the Time-Varying Behavior of the Equilibrium Velocity of Money in the Euro Area," Dynamic Modeling and Econometrics in Economics and Finance, in: Gilles Dufrénot & Takashi Matsuki (ed.), Recent Econometric Techniques for Macroeconomic and Financial Data, pages 113-146, Springer.
    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. Paniagua, Jordi & Sapena, Juan & Tamarit, Cecilio, 2017. "Fiscal sustainability in EMU countries: A continued fiscal commitment?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 85-97.
    2. Mariam Camarero & Juan Sapena & Cecilio Tamarit, 2020. "Modelling Time-Varying Parameters in Panel Data State-Space Frameworks: An Application to the Feldstein–Horioka Puzzle," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 56(1), pages 87-114, June.
    3. Mariam Camarero & Juan Sapena & Cecilio Tamarit, 2018. "FH Puzzle in the Eurozone: A time-varying analysis Preliminary Draft," Working Papers 1813, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
    4. Panizza, Ugo & Fatás, Antonio & Ghosh, Atish R. & ,, 2019. "The Motives to Borrow," CEPR Discussion Papers 13735, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Mariam Camarero & Alejandro Muñoz & Cecilio Tamarit, 2022. "The rise and fall of global financial flows in EU 15: new evidence using dynamic panels with common correlated effects," Working Papers 2212, Department of Applied Economics II, Universidad de Valencia.
    6. Paniagua, Jordi & Sapena, Juan & Tamarit, Cecilio, 2017. "Sovereign debt spreads in EMU: The time-varying role of fundamentals and market distrust," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 187-206.
    7. Johan Adler, 2006. "The Tax‐smoothing Hypothesis: Evidence from Sweden, 1952–1999," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 108(1), pages 81-95, March.
    8. Byrne, Joseph P. & Fiess, Norbert & MacDonald, Ronald, 2011. "The global dimension to fiscal sustainability," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 137-150, June.
    9. Adler, Johan, 2003. "Has Sweden’s government budget policy been too discretionary? Evidence from a generalization of the tax smoothing hypothesis," Working Papers in Economics 89, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    10. Salih BARIŞIK & Abdullah BARIS, 2017. "Impact of governance on budget deficit in developing countries," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania / Editura Economica, vol. 0(2(611), S), pages 111-130, Summer.
    11. Taner Turan & Mesut Karakas & Halit Yanikkaya, 2014. "Tax Smoothing Hypothesis: A Turkish Case," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 61(4), pages 487-501, September.
    12. Dobnik, Frauke, 2011. "Energy Consumption and Economic Growth Revisited: Structural Breaks and Cross-section Dependence," Ruhr Economic Papers 303, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    13. Cashin, P. & Haque, N. & Olekalns, N., 1999. "Spend Now, Pay Later? Tax Smoothing & Fiscal Sustainability in South Asia," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 700, The University of Melbourne.
    14. Alesina, A. & Passalacqua, A., 2016. "The Political Economy of Government Debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2599-2651, Elsevier.
    15. Gerhard Reitschuler, 2010. "Fiscal Policy And Optimal Taxation: Evidence From A Tax Smoothing Exercise," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 57(2), pages 238-252, May.
    16. Cho, Dooyeon & Lee, Kyung-woo, 2022. "Population aging and fiscal sustainability: Nonlinear evidence from Europe," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    17. Pastén, Roberto & Cover, James P., 2015. "Tax tilting and politics: Some theory and evidence for Latin America," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 208-218.
    18. John D. Levendis, 2018. "Time Series Econometrics," Springer Texts in Business and Economics, Springer, number 978-3-319-98282-3, January.
    19. Olaoye, Olumide Olusegun & Olomola, P.A., 2022. "Empirical analysis of asymmetry phenomenon in the public debt structure of Sub-Saharan Africa's five biggest economies: A Markov-Switching model," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 25(C).
    20. Samia OMRANE BELGUITH & Foued Badr GABSI & Ameni MTIBAA, 2018. "Tax smoothing hypothesis: The Tunisian case," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania / Editura Economica, vol. 0(4(617), W), pages 169-178, Winter.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H62 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Deficit; Surplus

    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:pra:mprapa:125942. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.