How Buoyant Is the Tax System? New Evidence from a Large Heterogeneous Panel

Abstract In this paper, we provide short‐run and long‐run tax buoyancy estimates for 107 countries (distributed between advanced, emerging and low income) for the period 1980–2014. By means of fully modified ordinary least square (OLS) and (pooled) mean group estimators, we find that (1) for advanced economies, both long‐run and short‐run buoyancies are not different from 1; (2) long‐run tax buoyancy exceeds 1 in the case of corporate income tax (CIT) for advanced economies, personal income tax and social security contributions in emerging markets and taxes on goods and services for low‐income countries; (3) in advanced countries, the buoyancy of the CIT buoyancy is larger during contractions than during times of economic expansions, whereas in emerging market economies, this is the case for the CIT and taxes on goods and services; and (4) both trade openness and human capital increase buoyancy, while inflation and output volatility decrease it. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.