Chung Tran

Fiscal Austerity Measures: Spending Cuts vs. Tax Increases

We formulate an overlapping generations model with skill heterogeneity and productive and non-productive government programs to study the macroeconomic and intergenerational welfare effects caused by risk premium shocks and government debt reductions. We demonstrate that in a small open economy with a high level of debt-to-GDP ratio a small increase in the risk premium leads to substantial output contraction and negative welfare effects. Next, we quantify the effects of reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio using a wide range of fiscal austerity measures. These reforms result in trade-offs between short-run contractions and long-run expansions in aggregate output. In addition, the spending-based austerity reform is dominated by the tax-based reform in terms of income in the short run, but becomes dominant in the long run. The welfare effects vary significantly across generations, depending on fiscal austerity measures, skills and working sector. The current old and middle age generations experience welfare losses while current young workers and future generations are beneficiaries of the reforms. A mixed reform results in the largest welfare effects.

Public Sector Pension Policies and Capital Accumulation in An Emerging Economy: The Case of Brazil

In many emerging economies such as Brazil, pension programs of public sector workers are more generous than pension programs of private sector workers. The opportunity costs of running generous public pension schemes for civil servants are potentially large in emerging economies that often suffer from low public investments in education and infrastructure. In this paper, we develop a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium framework to quantify these opportunity cost effects. We find that the efficiency and welfare gains of reallocating government resources from non-productive public sector pensions to productive public education and infrastructure investments are larger than the welfare effects created by classic public pension reforms that simply reduce savings and tax distortions by making pensions less generous. Calculating transitions to the post-reform steady state, we find that welfare losses for the generation born before the reform are offset by welfare gains by the generations born after the reform.

On the Marginal Excess Burden of Taxation in an Overlapping Generations Model

We quantify marginal excess burden, defined as the change in deadweight loss for an additional dollar of tax revenue, for different taxes. We use a dynamic general equilibrium, overlapping generations model featured with heterogeneous agents and a realistic structure of corporate finance and taxes. Our main results, based on an economy calibrated to Australian data, indicate that company taxes are more distorting than personal income and consumption taxes. Specifically, the marginal excess burden for the company income tax is 83 cents per dollar of tax revenue raised, compared to 34 cents and 24 cents for the personal income and consumption taxes, respectively. A broader analysis of more tax instruments confrim that the relatively larger excess burden of company taxes ultimately falls on households. Importantly, the marginal excess burden is distributed unevenly across skill types, generations and ages. This highlights political challenges when obtaining popular support for raising taxes. Hence, our analysis demonstrates that marginal excess burden can be an useful tool for evaluating both eciency and distributional implications of a tax increase at the margin.

Comparing Budget Repair Measures for a Small Open Economy with Growing Debt

In this study, we quantify the macroeconomic and welfare effects of alternative fiscal consolidation plans in the context of a small open economy. Using a computable overlapping generations model tailored to the Australian economy, we examine immediate and gradual eliminations of the existing fiscal deficit with (i) temporary income tax hikes, (ii) temporary consumption tax hikes and (iii) temporary transfer payment cuts. The simulation results indicate that all three examined fiscal measures result in favourable long-run macroeconomic and welfare outcomes, but have adverse consequences in the short run that are particularly severe under the immediate fiscal consolidation plan. Moreover, our results show that cutting transfer payments leads to the worst welfare outcome for all generations currently alive, and especially the poor. Increasing the consumption tax rate results in smaller welfare losses, but compared to raising income taxes, the current poor households pay much larger welfare costs. Overall, the welfare trade-offs between current and future generations, as well as between the rich and poor, highlight key political constraints and point to challenging policy choices for the wellbeing of future generations.

Budget Repair Measures: Tough Choices for Australia's Future

This study quantifies the macroeconomic and welfare effects of three proposed fiscal measures to eliminate Australian government budget deficits and to reduce public debt by 2030, namely: (i) temporary income tax hikes; (ii) temporary consumption tax hikes (increases in the GST rate); and (iii) temporary transfer payment cuts. Our quantitative analysis is based on a computable overlapping generations (OLG) model that is tailored to the Australian economy. The simulation results indicate that all three examined fiscal measures result in favourable long-run macroeconomic and welfare outcomes, but severe adverse consequences during the fiscal consolidation period. Moreover, our results show that cutting transfer payments leads to the worst welfare outcome for all generations currently alive, and especially the poor. Increasing the consumption tax rate results in smaller welfare losses, but compared to raising income taxes, the current poor households pay much larger welfare costs. Overall, the welfare trade-offs between current and future generations, as well as between the rich and poor, highlight key political constraints and point to tough policy choices for the wellbeing of future Australians.