H30 - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents: GeneralNávrat zpět

Fiscal policy undoubtedly represents one of the main economic policies of the state influencing the economic cycle. The subject of the article is a discussion of fiscal impulse measurement, which is a necessary condition for long-term optimal counter-cyclical fiscal policy settings. The study distinguishes between the primary effect of the fiscal impulse and the overall impact on the rest of the economy. Thus, the fiscal multipliers are estimated on Czech data including a specific crisis and post-crisis period. The findings may contribute to optimal fiscal policy settings in various stages of the business cycle.

The fundamental premise for the regular performance of economic policy, fulfilment of the revenues of the state budget and thus creating optimal conditions for efficient fiscal policy realization, is to minimize state receivables after maturity, as the theoretical planning of the revenue side of the state budget is irrelevant considering that tax payers and other entities fail to fulfil their liabilities towards the state, more precisely state budget, and conversely the state is not able to provide the approved income in the state budget. The objective of this paper is to: analyse the development of state receivables in years 2001-2014; identify the causes of the state receivables origin; test econometrically the dependence of formation of the state receivables after maturity on the economic cycle, the tax rate change and entry of the Czech Republic to the European Union; evaluate the results of the long-term research of implementation of an experimental model, during which the possibility of reaching incomparably higher efficiency was verified and proven in the management process of state receivables recovery; highlight this important negative determinant of the state fiscal policy. With regard to aforesaid, this text is structured in the following way. First, the author took into consideration the theories which are connected with surveyed matters, following by the characteristic and causes of state receivables development for the period of 1991 to 2014. The economic testing of dependence comes after. Next chapter characterizes the development of two experimental models for management process of recovery of state receivables after maturity, research results included. The last chapter provides all the research results, evaluates the economic policy significance of this destructive factor of fiscal policy and suggests some solutions.

The aim of this paper is to quantify the implementation lag of discretionary fiscal policy in the Czech Republic between 1997 and 2013. Based on a unique dataset created for this study, the length and structure of implementation lag is analysed. Dataset is extending the original dataset used by the Czech National Bank. This study further analyses factors with an impact on implementation lag. Implementation lag is the length of period between decision of the economic policy makers on the actual response to the fundamental change in the economy and implementation of this response to the legislation. Average implementation lag of discretionary fiscal policy in the Czech Republic is 2.4 quarters. The greatest deal counts for the implementation lag in the Chamber of Deputies. Length of implementation lag of discretionary fiscal policy is influenced especially by the total occupancy of the Chamber of Deputies, majority, which the government parties have in the Parliament, and the frequency of the veto power usage.

The article deals with the issue of fiscal sustainability, which has gained in importance after the recent financial and sovereign debt crisis. The article defi nes the term of financial sustainability in its theoretical part. The next section continues with the historical fiscal data for countries in the European Union. The main part of the article estimates reaction function of fiscal policy using panel data regression model. Tests are performed for multiple groups of countries, namely for the entire European Union, the old member states, the new member states, and the states most affected by the recent financial and sovereign debt crisis. This classification allows higher accuracy and better interpretability of the model results. Data results show rather pro-cyclicality of fiscal authorities' behaviour.

The Slovak economy is experiencing another significant phase of fiscal consolidation in its history. Unlike previous episodes of major consolidation in our history, our economy cannot "rely" on a soft cushion in the form of favourable global economic situation, integration and launch of new capacities in the automotive industry, as it was in 2003-2005 and 2011. The main objective of this paper is to estimate the size of fiscal multipliers in Slovakia in order to quantify the impact of fiscal packages in 2011 and 2013. The results show that the expenditure oriented consolidation has higher costs in form of lost growth. However, in the medium to long term it is less painful. Effect of consolidation package on GDP growth in 2011 is estimated at -0.99 percentage points. In 2013, we estimate that the fiscal consolidation cuts the growth of 0.68 percentage points.

This aim of the article is to determine the optimal tax policy horizon, and thus its strongest impact on economic growth in OECD countries. From a methodological point of view, the empirical analysis is based on a dynamic panel model, in which the data for the OECD countries in the period of 2000-2011 are used. The results confirm the economic theory about the negative impact of taxes on growth and show that the tax policy infl uences the growth the strongest with the 2-3 years lag. The analysis also confi rms that permanent tax changes in sense of increased taxation may not be as negative for growth if they are accompanied by effective tax collection and increase of tax revenues.

The objective of the article is to identify impact of economic policy implications on current financial and economic crisis. The analysis examines a hypothesis that the main causes of financial and economic crisis include unbalanced developments of the macroeconomic sphere as well as existing weaknesses of banking systems, which often do not evolve in line with the development of economy fundamentals. The article is going to inspect three areas: (i) What development trends and economic policy were registered in the pre-crisis period in order to identify the main causes of economic fluctuations of economy; (ii) How economic policies responded to the course of the financial and economic crisis; (iii) What was the effect financial crisis had on the real economy development? The main task for after-crisis periods is to improve setting of monetary and fiscal policy, bank risk management system and also system for monitoring and analysing the business cycle.

In this paper we are presenting an analysis of shift of tax burden from income onto consumption. The analyzed consumption tax is value added tax, while destination principle is applied. The result of analysis is finding that the contemporary tax policy in the Czech Republic is suboptimal from the point of view of tax burden distribution between production factors and consumption. Theoretical findings are confirmed by analysis of data from European countries. Every percentage above the EU27 average of consumption taxes share on total tax quota results into increase of GDP growth by 0,04% to 0,05% p.a. The Czech political "elite" determines the fiscal policy to be popular and recent surveys confirmed Czechs' dislike towards consumption taxes, especially value added tax. Therefore the huge cost of the Czech tax system - high taxation of wages and low value added tax - can be viewed also as agency cost.

This paper analyzes the tax penalty on volatile personal income under progressive tax rates. The phenomenon may have an effect on long-term entrepreneurial decisions as well as risky occupational choice. An options-based model is used to estimate the expected effective rate due from tax-payers at different income levels and volatilities under the current Czech legislation. A comparison is made to the system which has been in place until 2005, as well as to the Slovak flat-rate schedule. The model shows that volatile incomes incur a substantial penalty of up to 2 percentage points on the effective rate peaking just below the official income statistics mean. The effect is more pronounced than under the former parameters of the tax code. A severe impact on below-average earners due to the mandatory minimum tax-base regulation has been demonstrated. On the other hand, the Slovak flat tax with a single marginal rate bears virtually no sensitivity to income volatility, with the slight exception of very low incomes.

The question of public finance stability and the economic stability are widely discussed topics, not only in transitive and emerging economies, but also in developed countries. The aim of this paper is to find out and measure connections between the fiscal policy development and external economic stability. This research is based on a quantification of the budget deficit and public debt impact onto exchange rate in chosen countries that have recently experienced some kind of financial crisis. External competitiveness is also assessed by the fiscal policy impact onto current account balance. It is necessary to point out that monetary variables are going to be probably more important but the fiscal sector cannot be omitted. Especially nowadays when there is an integration process in EMU going on, where the fiscal policy is going to play important role in the economic stability.

Macroeconomic policy is often evaluated solely on the basis of empirical evidence, such as observing the behavior of macroaggregates. This paper argues that this approach bears a shortcoming: "improvement" of macroaggregates can be socially undesirable under certain circumstances. Thus the sole exploration of macroaggregates is not sufficient to evaluate the macroeconomic policy -axiomatic economic theory must be used as well to determine whether the outcomes of macroeconomic policy are beneficial to society or not. The paper first offers a precise definition of a social welfare function (based as much as possible on microfoundations). Then it considers the possibility that macroaggregates might not always correlate with society's welfare. Some illustrations are covered too.

Data on the economic development of OECD-Member countries show that tax structures in all OECD countries are changing, but one constant feature is that the share of taxes in GDP is rising. The aim of this article is to discus the main reasons for the increased tax burden in OECD countries, the difficulties of international comparisons of tax burden, and the conditions for tax burden reduction in the Czech Republic. An international comparison is difficult because national economic indicators can be distorted by methods used for measuring GDP on the one hand and by tax-revenues assessment on the other. For example, some countries' tax/GDP ratios are underestimated on account of considerable and hidden "tax expenditures". Czech tax policy is limited by the co-ordination and harmonization with, and the fiscal objectives of its accession to, the European Union.

This article aims to argue with the wide-spread perception of discretionary fiscal policy as a poor macroeconomic stabilization tool, especially in comparison with the contemporary performance of monetary policy. European Monetary Union Member States are hit by the asymmetric shocks or respond dissimilarly to a common shock. This is the strongest reasoning for the rehabilitation of active fiscal macroeconomic stabilization. Prudent fiscal and debt management policies are powerful to mitigate the economic impacts of various shocks at a national level and thus to replace the loss of autonomous monetary and exchange rate policy. The resurrection of fiscal policy is contingent on the efective institutional framework for its implementation. The principle of proposed reforms in fiscal policy stems from political economics background and corresponds to recent reforms in monetary and public debt management institutions. The only way how to address the traditional incentive constraints of policy discretion is to set up an independent fiscal agency outside of Ministry of Finance.