Δεν διατίθεται στα ελληνικά.
Tara McIndoe-Calder
- 9 October 2025
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 3136Details
- Abstract
- This paper presents a comprehensive characterization of “fiscal drag”—the increase in tax revenue that occurs when nominal tax bases grow but nominal parameters of progressive tax legislation are not updated accordingly—across 21 European countries using a microsimulationapproach. First, we estimate tax-to-base elasticities, showing that the progressivity built in each country’s personal income tax system induces elasticities around 1.7–2 for many countries, indicating a potential for large fiscal drag effects. We unpack these elasticities to show stark heterogeneity in their underlying mechanisms (tax brackets or tax deductions and credits), across income sources (labor, capital, self-employment, public benefits), and across the individual income distribution. Second, we extend the analysis beyond these elasticities to study fiscal drag in practice between 2019 and 2023, incorporating observed income growth and legislative changes. We quantify the actual impact of fiscal drag and the extent to which government policies have offset it, either through indexation or other reforms. Our results provide new insights into the fiscal and distributional effects of fiscal drag in Europe, as well as useful statistics for modeling public finances.
- JEL Code
- D31 : Microeconomics→Distribution→Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
H24 : Public Economics→Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue→Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
E62 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook→Fiscal Policy
- 16 May 2017
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2062Details
- Abstract
- Drawing on the 2013 Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) and complementary administrative data sources, we simulate household balance sheets at the micro level for the 2005-14 period. We use this dataset to tell the story of household leveraging and deleveraging over a tumultuous period for the Irish economy. We show that deleveraging has proceeded at a signficantly faster pace for older households, when compared with younger age groups. In contrast, we find that a higher-incidence o f tracker mortgages amongst younger borrowers – which passed through the historically low ECB policy rates since 2009 – relative to older borrowers has played a major role in easing the debt repayment burden in the presence of large income shocks. Notwithstanding historically low interest rates, we show that income shocks are the main factor contributing to mortgage repayment problems. However, there is also a role for equity factors.
- JEL Code
- D12 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
D31 : Microeconomics→Distribution→Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
E21 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Consumption, Saving, Wealth - Network
- Household Finance and Consumption Network (HFCN)