1887

OECD Economics Department Working Papers

Working papers from the Economics Department of the OECD that cover the full range of the Department’s work including the economic situation, policy analysis and projections; fiscal policy, public expenditure and taxation; and structural issues including ageing, growth and productivity, migration, environment, human capital, housing, trade and investment, labour markets, regulatory reform, competition, health, and other issues.

The views expressed in these papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries.

English, French

New Tax and Expenditure Elasticity Estimates for EU Budget Surveillance

This paper estimates the elasticities of government revenue and expenditure items with respect to the output gap for European Union (EU) countries. These elasticities are used by the European Commission, as part of the EU fiscal surveillance process, to calculate the semi-elasticity of the budget balance as a percentage of GDP with respect to the output gap. The study updates the earlier 2005 study of OECD economies using the most recent datasets and tax codes, the coverage being confined in this paper to the 28 EU member states, seven of which are not OECD members. The same basic two-step methodology is retained: revenue and expenditure elasticities with respect to the output gap being defined as the product of, first, the elasticities of individual revenue and expenditure items with respect to their bases and, second, the elasticities of these bases with respect to the output gap. A number of refinements and methodological improvements are made relative to the 2005 study. The revisions to individual elasticities relative to the 2005 vintage are significant in a number of cases but do not follow a clear pattern across countries, except for the elasticities of corporate income tax revenue which are revised up in most cases.

English

Keywords: budget elasticity, cyclically adjusted, fiscal surveillance, automatic stabilisers
JEL: H30: Public Economics / Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents / Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents: General; E62: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook / Fiscal Policy; H60: Public Economics / National Budget, Deficit, and Debt / National Budget, Deficit, and Debt: General
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error