Taxation, Corruption, and Growth

Philippe Aghion, Ufuk Akcigit, Julia Cagé and William Kerr

No 21928, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We build an endogenous growth model to analyze the relationships between taxation, corruption, and economic growth. Entrepreneurs lie at the center of the model and face disincentive effects from taxation but acquire positive benefits from public infrastructure. Political corruption governs the efficiency with which tax revenues are translated into infrastructure. The model predicts an inverted-U relationship between taxation and growth, with corruption reducing the optimal taxation level. We find evidence consistent with these predictions and the entrepreneurial channel using data from the Longitudinal Business Database of the US Census Bureau. The marginal effect of taxation for growth for a state at the 10th or 25th percentile of corruption is significantly positive; on the other hand, the marginal effects of taxation for growth for a state at the 90th percentile of corruption are much lower across the board. We make progress towards causality through Granger-style tests and by considering periphery counties where effective tax policy is largely driven by bordering states. Finally, we calibrate our model and find that the calibrated taxation rate of 37% is fairly close to the model's estimated welfare maximizing taxation rate of 42%. Reducing corruption provides the largest potential impact for welfare gain through its impact on the uses of tax revenues.

JEL-codes: H11 H21 H25 H41 H71 H72 M13 O11 O12 O40 R11 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-pbe, nep-pol, nep-pub and nep-sbm
Note: EFG PE PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (43)

Published as Philippe Aghion & Ufuk Akcigit & Julia Cagé & William R. Kerr, 2016. "Taxation, corruption, and growth," European Economic Review, .

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21928.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Taxation, corruption, and growth (2016)
Working Paper: Taxation, Corruption, and Growth (2016)
Working Paper: Taxation, Corruption, and Growth (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21928

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21928

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().