Essays on fiscal policy, income inequality, and economic activity

• Autor: Cardoso, Dante De Souza
• Orientador: Carvalho, Laura Barbosa de
  
• Assuntos: Abordagem Narrativa; Tributos Diretos; Método De Projeções Locais; Tributos Indiretos; Ajustes Fiscais; Desigualdade De Renda; Atividade Econômica; Direct Taxes; Narrative Approach; Local Projections Method; Indirect Taxes; Fiscal Consolidations; Economic Activity; Income Inequality
• Notas: Tese (Doutorado)
  
• Descrição: This doctoral dissertation contributed to the empirical literature on fiscal pol- icy, income inequality, and economic activity. Chapter 1 is based on David and Leighs (2018) narrative dataset and estimated the dynamic effects of fiscal consoli- dations on income inequality from Jordás (2005) local projections method for nine South American economies in the 1991-2017 period. Baseline results suggested that while spending-based fiscal consolidations significantly increase the Gini index by 2.48% in the medium run, tax-based fiscal consolidations did not show statistically significant effects on income inequality. The magnitude of this effect was higher than in most of the previous studies carried out for OECD countries. In Chapter 2, we relied on budget policy documents to decompose David and Leighs (2018) narrative database for 14 Latin American and Caribbean economies between 1989 and 2016 into adjustments based on direct and indirect taxes. In Chapter 3, based on this decomposition and Alesina et al.s (2017) dataset for OECD countries and using the Local Projections method (Jordà 2005), we estimated austerity impacts based on direct and indirect taxes on income inequality and economic activity for LAC and OCDE economies. We compared these results with those of spending- based and tax-based fiscal policy shocks. For the LAC sample, fiscal adjustments based on expenditure cuts were more adverse to economic activity than the effects of tax-based policy shocks, and direct tax-based episodes did not generate signifi- cant impacts on GDP. Regarding indirect tax-based effects, results were similar for both regions, generating a drop in GDP. When it comes to the impacts on income distribution, while direct tax-based (spending-based) fiscal consolidations decreased (increased) inequality for the LAC sample, they did not generate significant impacts on the Gini index for disposable income for OECD economies. Differently, indirect tax-based fiscal consolidations deteriorated income distribution only for the OECD sample. Considering distributional and economic activity issues, while episodes of austerity based on expenditure cuts presented the worst results for LAC, direct tax- based fiscal policy shocks did not generate statistically significant impacts on GDP and reduced inequality.
  
• DOI: 10.11606/T.12.2023.tde-12032024-120303
  
• Editor: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP; Universidade de São Paulo; Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade
  
• Data de criação/publicação: 2023-12-19
  
• Formato: Adobe PDF
  
• Idioma: Inglês