IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/bubdps/328247.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A temporary VAT cut as unconventional fiscal policy

Author

Listed:
  • Bachmann, Ruediger
  • Born, Benjamin
  • Goldfayn-Frank, Olga
  • Kocharkov, Georgi
  • Luetticke, Ralph
  • Weber, Michael

Abstract

We exploit Germany's temporary three-percentage-point VAT cut in the second half of 2020 to study the spending response to unconventional fiscal policy. We use survey and scanner data on household consumption expenditures and their perceived pass-through of the tax change into prices, and a RANK model to quantify the effects of this VAT policy. The survey and scanner data show that the temporary VAT reduction led to a relative increase in durable and, to a lesser extent, semidurable spending for individuals with high perceived pass-through. According to the RANK model, the VAT policy increased total aggregate consumption spending by 4.4 percent on impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Bachmann, Ruediger & Born, Benjamin & Goldfayn-Frank, Olga & Kocharkov, Georgi & Luetticke, Ralph & Weber, Michael, 2025. "A temporary VAT cut as unconventional fiscal policy," Discussion Papers 24/2025, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:bubdps:328247
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/328247/1/1937854949.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E65 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Studies of Particular Policy Episodes
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

    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:zbw:bubdps:328247. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dbbgvde.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.