IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tul/wpaper/2001.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Giver and Taker States Over the Business Cycle

Author

Listed:
  • Koray Caglayan

    (American Institutes of Research)

  • Steven M. Sheffrin

    (Tulane Economics and Murphy Institute)

Abstract

Some states pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal spending and have a negative balance of payments. While this uneven pattern of spending and taxation has been known for some time, little attention has been paid to the cyclical effects of these spending–tax differentials. Intuitively, “giver” states, those that pay more in taxes than they receive might have an extra cyclical buffer in the face of an economic downturn, as their balance of payments to the federal government may improve more than for “taker” states, those that receive more than they pay. In this study, we test the hypothesis of whether the giver status itself works as a potential stabilization mechanism during economic fluctuations. We use difference-in-differences methods to estimate the effect of giver status on the response of a state’s balance of payments during and after a recession. The Great Recession in 2008 serves as the exogenous shock in our identification strategy. To estimate the relationship between a state’s balance of payments and its gross domestic product growth, we take an instrumental variables approach. We use the variation in the response of federal fiscal measures to a recession that is attributable to giver status to estimate the effect of a state’s balance of payments on gross state product growth. The results from our difference-in-differences analysis indicate that after the 2008 recession, per capita balance of payments in giver states improved $808 more on average compared to taker states. The point estimates from our instrumental variable specification suggest that a thousand-dollar improvement in balance of payments increases the annual growth in gross domestic product by 2.2 percentage points. We also explore the milder 2001 recession. Although tax receipts of giver states fall more than taker states during the recession, spending also falls in these states relative to the taker states. The increase in defense and international spending after the 9/11 crisis most likely explains these results.

Suggested Citation

  • Koray Caglayan & Steven M. Sheffrin, 2020. "Giver and Taker States Over the Business Cycle," Working Papers 2001, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tul:wpaper:2001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.tulane.edu/RePEc/pdf/tul2001.pdf
    File Function: First Version, May 2020
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dolls, Mathias & Fuest, Clemens & Peichl, Andreas, 2012. "Automatic stabilizers and economic crisis: US vs. Europe," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 279-294.
    2. Alisdair McKay & Ricardo Reis, 2016. "The Role of Automatic Stabilizers in the U.S. Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 141-194, January.
    3. Daniel J. Wilson, 2012. "Fiscal Spending Jobs Multipliers: Evidence from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 251-282, August.
    4. Pierfederico Asdrubali & Bent E. Sørensen & Oved Yosha, 1996. "Channels of Interstate Risk Sharing: United States 1963–1990," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(4), pages 1081-1110.
    5. Joseph A. Pechman, 1973. "Responsiveness of the Federal Individual Income Tax to Changes in Income," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 4(2), pages 385-428.
    6. Pengyu Zhu & Jeffrey Brown, 2013. "Donor states and donee states: investigating geographic redistribution of the US federal-aid highway program 1974–2008," Transportation, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 203-227, January.
    7. Poterba, James M, 1994. "State Responses to Fiscal Crises: The Effects of Budgetary Institutions and Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 799-821, August.
    8. Fatás Antonio & Mihov Ilian, 2012. "Fiscal Policy as a Stabilization Tool," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(3), pages 1-68, October.
    9. Valerie A. Ramey, 2019. "Ten Years after the Financial Crisis: What Have We Learned from the Renaissance in Fiscal Research?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(2), pages 89-114, Spring.
    10. Oh, Hyunseung & Reis, Ricardo, 2012. "Targeted transfers and the fiscal response to the great recession," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(S), pages 50-64.
    11. Alan J. Auerbach & Daniel R. Feenberg, 2000. "The Significance of Federal Taxes as Automatic Stabilizers," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 37-56, Summer.
    12. James R. Hines Jr., 2010. "State Fiscal Policies and Transitory Income Fluctuations," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 41(2 (Fall)), pages 313-350.
    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. Alisdair McKay & Ricardo Reis, 2016. "The Role of Automatic Stabilizers in the U.S. Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 141-194, January.
    2. Wei Dong & Geoffrey Dunbar & Christian Friedrich & Dmitry Matveev & Romanos Priftis & Lin Shao, 2021. "Complementarities Between Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy—Literature Review," Discussion Papers 2021-4, Bank of Canada.
    3. Şen, Hüseyin & Kaya, Ayşe, 2021. "Output-volatility reducing effects of automatic stabilizers: Policy implications for EMU member states," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 43(6), pages 1388-1414.
    4. David Cashin & Jamie Lenney & Byron Lutz & William Peterman, 2018. "Fiscal policy and aggregate demand in the USA before, during, and following the Great Recession," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(6), pages 1519-1558, December.
    5. Mathias Dolls & Clemens Fuest & Andreas Peichl & Christian Wittneben, 2022. "Fiscal Consolidation and Automatic Stabilization: New Results," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 70(3), pages 420-450, September.
    6. Mathias Dolls & Clemens Fuest & Dirk Neumann & Andreas Peichl, 2018. "An unemployment insurance scheme for the euro area? A comparison of different alternatives using microdata," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 25(1), pages 273-309, February.
    7. Şen, Hüseyin & Kaya, Ayşe, 2019. "Output-volatility reducing effect of automatic stabilizers: Evidence from nine EMU member states," EconStor Preprints 206687, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    8. Martin Beraja, 2017. "Counterfactual Equivalence in Macroeconomics," 2017 Meeting Papers 1400, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Strehl, Wolfgang, 2019. "Revisiting the progressive consumption tax: A business cycle perspective," Discussion Papers 2019/13, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    10. Giorgio Motta & Patrizio Tirelli, 2012. "Optimal Simple Monetary and Fiscal Rules under Limited Asset Market Participation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(7), pages 1351-1374, October.
    11. Estelle Dauchy & Francisco Navarro-Sanchez & Nathan Seegert, 2021. "Taxation and Inequality: Active and Passive Channels," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 42, pages 156-177, October.
    12. Alisdair McKay & Ricardo Reis, 2021. "Optimal Automatic Stabilizers [Consumption versus Expenditure]," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 88(5), pages 2375-2406.
    13. Mario Crucini & Nam Vu, 2021. "Did the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Help Counties Most Affected by the Great Recession?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 42, pages 264-282, October.
    14. Christian Bredemeier & Falko Juessen & Roland Winkler, 2020. "Fiscal Policy and Occupational Employment Dynamics," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(6), pages 1527-1563, September.
    15. Christian Bayer & Benjamin Born & Ralph Luetticke & Gernot J Müller, 2023. "The Coronavirus Stimulus Package: How Large is the Transfer Multiplier," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(652), pages 1318-1347.
    16. Thiess Buettner & Clemens Fuest, 2010. "The role of the corporate income tax as an automatic stabilizer," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 17(6), pages 686-698, December.
    17. Kopiec, Paweł, 2022. "The government spending multiplier in the Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    18. Bill Dupor & Marios Karabarbounis & Marianna Kudlyak & M Saif Mehkari, 2023. "Regional Consumption Responses and the Aggregate Fiscal Multiplier," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 90(6), pages 2982-3021.
    19. Neumann, Dirk & Bargain, Olivier & Dolls, Mathias & Fuest, Clemens & Peichl, Andreas, 2012. "Fiscal Union in Europe? Efficiency, Equity and Stabilizing Effects of an EU-Wide Income Tax," VfS Annual Conference 2012 (Goettingen): New Approaches and Challenges for the Labor Market of the 21st Century 66063, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Mathias Dolls, 2019. "An Unemployment Re-Insurance Scheme for the Eurozone? Stabilizing and Redistributive Effects," EconPol Policy Reports 10, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Giver and taker states; Fiscal balances; Stabilization.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory

    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:tul:wpaper:2001. 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: Kerui Geng (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detulus.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.