Working Paper

On the Analytics of the Dynamic Laffer Curve

Jonas Agell, Mats Persson
CESifo, Munich, 2000

CESifo Working Paper No. 383

In this paper, we analyze government budget balance within a simple model of endogenous growth. For the AK model, simple analytical conditions for a tax cut to be self-financing can be derived. The critical variable is not the tax rate per se, but the ?transfer-adjusted? tax rate. We discuss some conceptual issues in dynamic revenue analysis, and we explain why previous studies have arrived at seemingly contradictory results. Finally, we perform an empirical study of the transfer-adjusted tax rates of the OECD countries to see which country has the highest potential for fiscal improvements; it turns out that only a few countries have any potential for such ?dynamic scoring?.

Keywords: Laffer effects, intertemporal models, dynamic scoring, growth models