| 1. |
- Ohlsson, Henry, 1956-
(författare)
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The legacy of the Swedish gift and inheritance tax, 1884-2004
- 2011
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Ingår i: European Review of Economic History. - 1361-4916 .- 1474-0044. ; 15:3, s. 539-569
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The objective of this paper is to study how people change their behaviour when taxes change. I follow the revenue from the gift, inheritance and estate taxes in Sweden during more than a century. Second, I focus on a unique episode during the second half of the 1940s when gifts and gift tax revenue exploded. I have access to aggregate tax revenue data since 1884. Moreover, I have constructed a rich micro data set of all gifts reported during the period 1942–1949 in one county. A first main result is that gifts, inheritances and estates never were important sources of tax revenue. Tax revenue as shares of GDP and total government revenue reached peaks already in the 1930s. The role of these taxes has instead primarily been equity and to provide integrity for other tax bases. Second, expectations were important. Gift tax revenue during the 1940s started to increase long before a new estate tax and increased wealth taxation were decided and implemented. The increase even began before the legislative process started. Third, economic power and economic control were important. Parents gave to their children to avoid taxes, but only when the expected gain became large enough and in ways that left them with as much economic power as possible.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Nordblom, Katarina, et al.
(författare)
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Tax avoidance and intra-family transfers
- 2006
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Ingår i: Journal of Public Economics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0047-2727 .- 1879-2316. ; 90:8-9, s. 1669-1680
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We study how taxes on intra-family transfers (bequests and gifts) affect parents' transfers to their children. Our focus is on the incentives for tax avoidance. These issues are important for families and their welfare, as well as for governments and their possibilities of raising revenue from transfer taxes. Using a theoretical model, we show how altruistic parents avoid taxes by changing the timing of transfers when inter vivos gifts are taxed separately from bequests (which is the case in many developed countries). The excess burden per tax dollar of the transfer taxes is sometimes infinitely large because of tax avoidance. All tax avoidance is eliminated if bequests and gifts from the same donor are jointly taxed.
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| 4. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Growth and the public sector : a reply
- 1999
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Fölster and Henrekson (1998) claim that they, by addressing a number of econometric problems, can establish that it is likely that economies with a large public sector grow more slowly than economies with a small public sector. But their regressions are fundamentally flawed. Re-estimating their growth equation using theoretically valid instruments, we find that the growth effect of the public sector is statistically insignificant, and much smaller than the point-estimates reported by Fölster and Henrekson. This is consistent with the agnostic conclusion, drawn by us and many others, that cross-country growth regressions are unlikely to give a reliable answer to whether a large public sector is growth promoting or retarding.
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| 5. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Growth and the public sector : A reply
- 1999
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Ingår i: European Journal of Political Economy. - 0176-2680 .- 1873-5703. ; 15:2, s. 359-366
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Fölster and Henrekson [Fölster, S., Henrekson, M., 1999. Growth and the public sector: A critique of the critics. European Journal of Political Economy 15, 337–358] claim that, by addressing a number of econometric problems, they can establish that it is likely that economies with a large public sector grow more slowly than economies with a small public sector. But their regressions are fundamentally flawed. Re-estimating their growth equation using theoretically valid instruments, we find that the growth effect of the public sector is statistically insignificant, and much smaller than the point-estimates that they report. This is consistent with the agnostic conclusion, drawn by us and others, that cross-country growth regressions are unlikely to provide a reliable answer as to whether a large public sector is growth promoting or retarding.
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| 6. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Growth and the public sector : A critical review essay
- 1997
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Ingår i: European Journal of Political Economy. - 0176-2680 .- 1873-5703. ; 13:1, s. 33-52
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We review the theoretical and empirical evidence on the relation between growth and the public sector against the background of the current debate on the issue. The evidence is found to admit no conclusion on whether the relation is positive, negative or non-existent. A simple cross-country regression in an OECD sample illustrates how the relation is easily tilted from negative to positive by introducing control variables for initial GDP and the dependent population.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Growth effects of government expenditure and taxation in rich countries : A comment
- 2006
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Ingår i: European Economic Review. - : Elsevier BV. - 0014-2921 .- 1873-572X. ; 50:1, s. 211-218
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Fölster and Henrekson (European Economic Review 45 (2001), 1501–1520) argue that “...the more the econometric problems that are addressed, the more robust the relationship between government size and economic growth appears”. But in failing to control for simultaneity and in ignoring issues of sample-selection bias, the regressions reported by Fölster/Henrekson are flawed. Using theoretically valid instruments, we find that the estimated partial correlation between size of the public sector and economic growth is statistically insignificant and highly unstable across specifications. Moreover, since instruments are weak, all hypothesis tests are unreliable. We conclude that cross-country growth regressions are unlikely to come up with a reliable answer to the question of the growth effects of government spending and taxation.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Agell, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Tillväxt och offentlig sektor
- 1994
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Ingår i: Ekonomisk Debatt. - 0345-2646. ; 22:4, s. 373-385
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- I den populära svenska debatten hävdas ofta att det finns ett starkt negativt samband mellan offentlig sektor och ekonomisk tillväxt. Den empiriska litteraturen ger emellertid inte något belägg for ett entydigt kausalt samband från stor offentlig sektor till låg tillväxt. Jonas Agell, Thomas Lindh och Henry Ohlsson går i denna artikel igenom den aktuella teoretiska och empiriska forskningen på området. Med några enkla jämförelser för OECD-länderna visar de att andra faktorer än offentlig sektor kan tänkas ha större betydelse för tillväxtskillnader mellan länder.
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