Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3855.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fiscal Federalism and Optimum Currency Areas: Evidence for Europe From the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Xavier Sala-i-Martin
  • Jeffrey Sachs
Abstract
The main goal of this paper is to estimate to what extent the federal government of the United States insures member states against regional income shocks. We find that a one dollar reduction in a region's per capita personal income triggers a decrease in federal taxes of about 34 cents and an increase in federal transfers of about 6 cents. Hence, the final reduction in disposable per capita income is on the order of 60 cents. That is, between one third and one half of the initial shock is absorbed by the federal government. The much larger reaction of taxes than transfers to these regional imbalances reflects the fact that the main mechanism at work is the federal income tax system which in turn means that the stabilization process is automatic rather than specifically designed each time there is a cyclical movement in income. Some economists may want to argue that this regional insurance scheme provided by the federal government is an important reason why the system of fixed exchange rates that exists within the United States today has survived without major problems. Under this view, the creation of a European Central Bank that issues unified European currency without the simultaneous introduction (or expansion) of a fiscal federalist system could put the project at risk. Rough calculations of the impact of the existing European tax system on regional income suggests that a one dollar shock to regional GDP will reduce tax payments to the EEC government by half a cent!. Hence, the current European tax system has a long way to go before it reaches the 34 cents of the U.S. Federal Government.

Suggested Citation

  • Xavier Sala-i-Martin & Jeffrey Sachs, 1991. "Fiscal Federalism and Optimum Currency Areas: Evidence for Europe From the United States," NBER Working Papers 3855, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3855
    Note: ITI IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3855.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barro, Robert J. & Gordon, David B., 1983. "Rules, discretion and reputation in a model of monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 101-121.
    2. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    3. Obstfeld, Maurice, 1986. "Capital controls, the dual exchange rate, and devaluation," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-2), pages 1-20, February.
    4. Barry Eichengreen, 1992. "Is Europe an Optimum Currency Area?," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Silvio Borner & Herbert Grubel (ed.), The European Community after 1992, chapter 8, pages 138-161, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Canzoneri, Matthew B & Rogers, Carol Ann, 1990. "Is the European Community an Optimal Currency Area? Optimal Taxation versus the Cost of Multiple Currencies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 419-433, June.
    6. Rendigs Fels, 1950. "Interregional Payments: A Comment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 64(3), pages 488-489.
    7. Penelope C. Hartland, 1950. "Interregional Payments: Reply," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 64(3), pages 489-490.
    8. Thomas Willett & Edward Tower, 1970. "Currency areas and exchange-rate flexibility," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 105(1), pages 48-65, September.
    9. Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1991. "Convergence across States and Regions," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(1), pages 107-182.
    10. Penelope Hartland, 1949. "Interregional Payments Compared with International Payments," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 63(3), pages 392-407.
    11. Blanchard, Olivier J, 1985. "Debt, Deficits, and Finite Horizons," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(2), pages 223-247, April.
    12. Barro, Robert J & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 223-251, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ricci, Luca Antonio, 2008. "A Model of an Optimum Currency Area," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 2, pages 1-31.
    2. Casey B. Mulligan & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1993. "Transitional Dynamics in Two-Sector Models of Endogenous Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 739-773.
    3. Eichengreen, Barry, 1994. "Deja Vu All Over Again: Lessons from the Gold Standard for European Monetary Unification," Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers 233215, University of California-Berkeley, Department of Economics.
    4. Bayoumi, Tamim & Eichengreen, Barry, 1994. "Macroeconomic Adjustment under Bretton Woods and the Post-Bretton-Woods Float: An Impulse-Response Analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(425), pages 813-827, July.
    5. Filippo Cesarano, 1997. "Currency Areas and Equilibrium," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 51-59, January.
    6. Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1990. "Lecture Notes on Economic Growth(I): Introduction to the Literature and Neoclassical Models," NBER Working Papers 3563, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Sophie Mantel, 1993. "Quelles perspectives pour la mobilité du travail ?," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 262(1), pages 111-121.
    8. Françoise Drumetz & Hélène Erkel-Rousse & Pierre Jaillard, 1993. "La convergence régionale et l'UEM," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 262(1), pages 135-147.
    9. Lafrance, Robert & St-Amant, Pierre, 2000. "Les zones monétaires optimales," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 76(4), pages 577-612, décembre.
    10. Luca Antonio Ricci, 1997. "Un modèle simple de zone monétaire optimale," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 128(2), pages 1-19.
    11. Meshack Tjirongo, 1995. "Short-term stabilization versus long-term price stability: evaluating Namibia`s membership of the Common Monetary Area," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/1995-18, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    12. Rudiger Dornbusch & Pierre Jacquet, 1992. "La France et l'Union économique et monétaire européenne," Revue de l'OFCE, Programme National Persée, vol. 39(1), pages 31-73.
    13. Garriga, Ana Carolina & Rodriguez, Cesar M., 2020. "More effective than we thought: Central bank independence and inflation in developing countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 87-105.
    14. Geoffrey M. B. Tootell, 1992. "Back to the future: monetary policy and the twin deficits," Working Papers 92-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    15. repec:zbw:rwidps:0030 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Michael Beenstock & Daniel Felsenstein, 2003. "Decomposing the Dynamics of Regional Earnings Disparities in Israel," ERSA conference papers ersa03p90, European Regional Science Association.
    17. Hany Eldemerdash & Hugh Metcalf & Sara Maioli, 2014. "Twin deficits: new evidence from a developing (oil vs. non-oil) countries’ perspective," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 825-851, November.
    18. Fehr, Hans & Ruocco, Anna, 1999. "Equity and efficiency aspects of the Italian debt reduction," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 569-589, December.
    19. Rey, Sergio, 2015. "Bells in Space: The Spatial Dynamics of US Interpersonal and Interregional Income Inequality," MPRA Paper 69482, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Wan, Guang Hua, 2005. "Convergence in food consumption in Rural China: Evidence from household survey data," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 90-102.
    21. Lorenzo Pozzi, 2003. "Tax Discounting in a High‐debt Economy," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(3), pages 261-282, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions
    • H00 - Public Economics - - General - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3855. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.