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Ideology and Tax Revenues in Latin America Ernesto Stein Lorena Caro Regional Seminar on Fiscal Policy Santiago, Chile, March 2013 Motivation • Shift to the left is probably the most important political development in Latin America in the last 15 years. • 1998 election of Chavez in Venezuela just the beginning, followed by Lagos, Lula, Kirchner, Vazquez, Morales, Correa… • Shift was pretty robust. Most countries that switched to the left stayed on the left (Chile, Guatemala being recent exceptions) Shift to the left Timeline: Leftist Presidents in America Latina. 1998-2009 Venezuela - Chavez Venezuela - Chavez 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 Dominican Republic Mejia Chile - Lagos Brazil - Lula Nicaragua - Ortega Argentina - N. Kichner Brazil - Lula 2003 2004 Venezuela - Chavez Paraguay - Lugo Guatemala - Colom 2005 Uruguay - Vasquez 2006 2007 2008 2009 Bolivia - Morales Ecuador - Correa Argentina - C. Kichner Chile - Bachelet Source: Debs and Helmke (2008) Shift to the left Leftist Presidents,% Total Presidents 0 20 40 60 The Shift to the Left in Latin America 1990 1993 1996 1999 Year 2002 2005 2008 Source: Author's calculation based on data from Debs and Helmke (2008) Motivation • Lots of work focused on documenting shift and exploring factors behind it (see Levitsky and Roberts, 2011). • Very little work on the policy impact of this shift. • In this paper, we focus on the impact of the shift to the left on one specific aspect of economic policy: fiscal revenues. • Fiscal revenues is a good variable to look at. Larger government commonly associated with the left; lower taxes and limited spending is usually associated with the right. • This is expected to be the case in particular for tax bases that fall predominantly on the rich, such as income taxes. • We will look at impact on overall tax revenues, but also on some specific tax bases: income taxes, VAT and labor taxes. Tax revenues in Latin America are comparatively low… 5 10 15 20 Total Tax Revenue, %GDP 25 Total Tax Revenues 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 Year OECD Latin America Eastern Europe Africa Asia Middle East Source: IMF(2011) and BID-CIAT(2012) Number of countries by region: OECD 32, Eastern Europe 6, Asia 12, Latin America 20, Africa 21, Middle East 6 …even after controlling for development, informality, sectorial structure of the economy and age composition Tax Pressure Gap between 2007-2009 Eastern Europe 3.5 OECD 2.6 Africa .45 Asia .03 Latin America -1.4 Middle East -13 -15 -10 -5 0 5 Source: Author's calculation based on data from IMF(2011), BID-CIAT(2012) Controling for: GDP per capita, Level of informality, sectoral structure of the economy, age composition and rents from natural resources But in recent years, revenues in Latin America have been catching up Changes in average Tax Revenues Average Tax Revenue(07-09) - Average Tax Revenue(91-93) Latin America 3.67 Asia 1.35 Middle East .672 Africa .407 OECD -.0194 0 1 2 3 4 Source: Author's calculation based on data from IMF, BID-CIAT. Controling for: GDP per capita, Level of informality, sectoral structure of the economy age composition and rents from natural resources Motivation • Could it be that the shift in ideology observed in the region may be partly responsible for the increase in tax revenues? • We will explore this empirically, using IDB-CIAT revenue data. • We use data on ideology from expert surveys (Debs and Helmke, 2008, Murillo et al, 2008) as well as elite surveys of legislators (PELA). • We find that the left is associated with higher revenues, in particular with regards to income tax revenues. Relevant literature • Literature on impact of partisanship/ ideology on macro outcomes goes back to Hibbs (1977). He found that leftleaning governments in developed countries had higher inflation, lower unemployment. Unemployment decreased with Democratic (US) and Labour (UK) governments, increased with Republican and Conservative governments • Since early work of Hibbs, many authors have looked at impact of ideology on fiscal outcomes. While most have focused on debt, deficits and expenditures, some have focused on tax revenues, mostly in developed countries Ideology and taxes: evidence from developed countries Author(s) Besley and Case (2003) Unit of Observation Methodology Results United States: States Multivariate regression, controlling for fixed effects and year fixed effects. Goverments headed by democracts are associated with higher taxes and spending than republican ones Angelopoulos, Economides and Kammas (2009) OECD Countries Fixed Effects and GMM PettersonLibdom(2008) Sweden: Municipalities Regression Discontinuity Design Ferreira and Gyourko (2009) United States: Cities Regression Discontinuity Design Migueis (2010) Portugal: Municipalities Regression Discontinuity Design Left wing governments rely more on capital relative to labor income taxation Left governments are associated with higher taxes and spending than their right counterparts There is no significant impact of partisanship on taxation Left wing municipalities are more likely to adopt a municipal corporate tax Ideology and taxes: evidence from Latin America • Literature on ideology and tax policy very recent, very sparse. • Sakurai and Menezes-Filho (2010) look at electoral cycles and partisan cycles in panel of Brazilian municipalities. They find impact of ideology on spending but not on tax collection. • Machado and Stein (2012) also look at Brazilian municipalities, using RDD. They find some evidence that the left collects more revenue than the right from business taxes, but less revenue from property taxes. • Hallerberg and Scartascini (2011) look at determinants of different types of tax reform. They find that left leaning governments are more likely to implement tax reforms that result in increased taxes, and, in particular, in income tax revenues. Ideology and taxes: evidence from Latin America • Hart (2010) uses expert survey data on ideology, looks at impact on taxation in a context in which tax policies are constrained by globalization. Finds that tax revenues are higher for right wing governments compared to their left leaning counterparts because they are more willing to rely on regressive consumption taxes. • In comparison to Hart (2010), we use wider set of countries (17 rather than 9), wider period coverage (through 2009 rather than 2006), wider variety of ideology variables (not just expert surveys but also elite legislator surveys), as well as a broader set of methodologies. Revenue data • The taxation data taken from IDB/CIAT dataset (used for the 2013 IDB flagship report on taxation). Available for 21 countries in Latin America between 1990-2009, disaggregated by revenue source. • Tax revenue data corresponds to the general government level. Comparable across countries and time (results robust to using central government data) • High quality data validated by country governments. • We use data on (all in proportion to GDP): – – – – Total tax revenues excluding social security taxes. Income tax revenues. Revenues from VAT. Revenues from social security taxes. Ideology data – expert surveys • We use data from Debs and Helmke (2008), who build on earlier efforts by Coppedge (1997) and others. • Covers 18 countries in Latin America, from 1990 through 2009. • Governments coded on 5 point scale (1-left, 2-CL, 3-C, 4-CR, 5-R). We follow these authors in using a dummy for governments on the left. We also used a dummy for L+CL. • For robustness, we use data from Murillo et al (2008) also from expert surveys. They have a more narrow view of what is “left”. We also combine both sources, and build a dummy for governments that are coded as L or CL in both surveys. • Potential problem with expert surveys: tends to be retrospective (an expert today coding a past administration). Thus, we cannot rule out possibility that experts code as left (ex-post) a government because it raised certain taxes. Ideology data – elite survey of legislators • The second ideology measure based on Parliamentary Elites of Latin America survey conducted by the University of Salamanca, available for 18 countries. • Survey asks deputies about ideological position of main parties on a 1 (left) to 10 (right) scale. It also asks about ideology of key politicians (including the president). • We used the average placement of the president’s ideology as our ideology measure. • Advantage: these are not retrospective. – For example, survey corresponding to 1997-2001 legislature in Argentina conducted in May/June 1998. • Disadvantage: lower coverage, as some countries have only one or two waves of the survey. Descriptive Statistics Variable Revenues Total Tax Revenues (% GDP) VAT (% GDP) Income Tax (% GDP) Social Security Taxes (% GDP) Ideology Left dummy (D&H) President's ideology (PELA) Left + Center Left (D&H) Left (Murillo) Left + Center Left (Murillo) D&H + Murillo Controls GDP per capita (in logs) Openness (in logs) Self Employment Natural Resources Rents (% GDP) Share of the population under 15 and over 65 year Number of observation Mean Standard Deviation 332 14.348 4.412 6.940 27.671 328 332 5.306 3.514 2.398 1.589 1.194 0.675 13.073 9.266 332 3.687 2.016 0.052 8.801 306 203 306 323 323 289 0.170 6.681 0.255 0.022 0.170 0.170 0.376 1.670 0.437 0.146 0.376 0.376 0 2.216 0 0 0 0 1 9.288 1 1 1 1 340 8.656 340 80.632 282 40.046 340 4.943 340 40.220 Min Max 0.463 7.494 9.453 72.178 0 404.097 10.025 19.700 69.200 6.260 0.106 4.153 31.593 41.633 49.070 Methodology: Fixed Effects model • Baseline model: • This model allows us to identify the impact of ideology on taxation from within country variation across time. • We include year dummies to avoid spurious correlation caused by simultaneous increase in leftist governments and revenues over time. • Std. errors clustered by administration. • Additional controls: openness (WEO); informality (WDI); age composition of the population (WDI); natural resource rents as a share of GDP (WDI). Fixed Effects Results (baseline) Dependent Variable Left Total Tax Total Tax VAT/GDP VAT/GDP Revenue/GDP Revenue/GDP (3) (4) (1) (2) 1.860** [0.590] President's Ideology Log GDP per Capita Constant -1.446 [2.395] 24.06 [20.45] 0.181 [0.199] -0.522** [0.142] -0.319 [2.657] 21.32 [23.81] -0.906 [1.099] 11.11 [9.401] Time Year Dummies Yes Yes Yes Country Fixed Effects Yes Yes Yes Observations 281 203 281 Number of countries 17 16 17 Adjusted R-squared 0.889 0.884 0.934 Cluster standard errors in brackets ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 Income Tax/GDP (5) Income Tax/GDP (6) 1.280** [0.363] -0.00407 [0.0395] 0.561 [1.090] 0.988 [9.550] Yes Yes 203 16 0.921 Social Social Security/GDP Security/GDP (7) (8) -0.258 [0.200] 1.465 [1.304] -9.952 [11.13] -0.440** [0.138] 2.158 [1.874] -11.68 [17.20] -0.724 [1.254] 9.636 [10.69] 0.0676 [0.0475] 0.874 [1.722] -3.472 [15.22] Yes Yes 281 17 0.734 Yes Yes 203 16 0.720 Yes Yes 281 17 0.908 Yes Yes 203 16 0.915 Fixed Effects Results (with additional controls) Dependent Variable Left Total Tax Total Tax Income VAT/GDP VAT/GDP Revenue/GDP Revenue/GDP Tax/GDP (3) (4) (1) (2) (5) 1.440** [0.498] President's Ideology Log GDP per Capita Constant -0.729 [2.656] 8.893 [23.84] 0.318 [0.214] -0.394** [0.126] -0.0775 [2.667] 19.79 [24.63] -0.133 [1.259] 3.298 [10.72] Income Social Social Tax/GDP Security/GDP Security/GDP (6) (7) (8) 0.693** [0.185] -0.00809 [0.0456] 1.138 [1.231] -9.523 [10.78] 2.745** [0.893] -14.98+ [8.686] -0.102 [0.198] -0.250** [0.0794] 2.795* [1.229] -8.383 [12.96] 0.168 [1.228] 10.84 [11.90] 0.0147 [0.0489] 1.123 [1.422] 0.277 [12.92] Time Year Dummies Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Country Fixed Effects Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Observations 238 181 238 181 238 181 238 181 Number of countries 17 16 17 16 17 16 17 16 Adjusted R-squared 0.911 0.885 0.940 0.926 0.847 0.811 0.907 0.922 Controlling for Openness, self employment, the ratio of the population under 15 and over 65 years old and natural resources rents as GDP percentage Cluster standard errors in brackets ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 Fixed Effects Results: Robustness Checks Left Left + Center Left (D&H) Left (Murillo) Total Tax Revenue/GDP 1.860** [0.590] 0.812+ [0.471] 3.317* [1.468] 0.933 [0.559] VAT/GDP 0.181 [0.199] 0.0502 [0.160] 0.0131 [0.314] 0.0799 [0.183] Income Tax/GDP 1.280** [0.363] 0.886** [0.292] 3.034* [1.435] 0.781* [0.344] Left + Center Left (Murillo) Left + Center 1.234* 0.0488 0.906* Left (D&H + Murillo) [0.580] [0.190] [0.370] Cluster standard errors in brackets ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 Social Security/GDP -0.258 [0.200] -0.356* [0.158] 0.207 [0.434] -0.479** [0.179] -0.502** [0.188] Endogeneity concerns • An important concern has to do with endogeneity. For example, a third factor, omitted from the model, may be explaining both ideology and the level of taxation. • Most obvious candidate: preferences of the population, which are not observed Increase in demand for redistribution More liberal preferences of the population Increase in votes for left leaning candidates Higher taxes Greater odds that left will gain office • If omitted variable varies through time, fixed effect model may attribute to government ideology tax increases that are due to changing preferences. Exploiting the temporal pattern of taxation around shifts in ideology • If we think that preferences shift gradually but government ideology jumps discretely, temporal pattern of taxation around changes in government ideology may provide some clues. • The idea is to follow revenues in left-bound countries within an 8-year window centered around shift in government ideology, and check whether there is a jump in revenues around the arrival of the left. • If revenues jump on impact, or gradually right after the shift, we can attribute the revenue increase to the shift in government ideology. • If revenues rise gradually before the change in government ideology, the increase is more likely due to shift in preferences. • Preferences for redistribution may also jump discretely. But, one would have to explain why such change happened exactly at the same time as the change in government ideology. Exploiting the temporal pattern of taxation • Model 4 ,=∝+ + ∗ + (),+ , =−4 • In this exercise, “left”takes a value of 1 for the whole period for countries that at some point adopt a leftist government. • We create a series of dummies “Period j with j going from -4 to 4”, to indicate the period before or after the arrival of the left. • We interact these period dummies with our redefined “left” dummy – For example, β-3 is the coefficient corresponding to all left-bound countries in the year 3 before the arrival of the left. – β2 is the coefficient corresponding to all left-bound countries during the second period of their first leftist administration. • The key to the interpretation of the results is not the significance of the β coefficients per se, but rather the difference in these coefficients within the window, before and after the event. Exploiting the temporal pattern of taxation VARI ABLES Left* I -4 Left* I -3 Left* I -2 Left* I -1 Left* I +1 Left* I +2 Left* I +3 Left* I +4 Log GDP per capi ta Constant Total Tax Revenue/ GDP (1) VAT/ GDP (2) I ncome Tax/ GDP (3) Soci al Securi ty/ GDP (4) 0 .50 3 [0 .429] 0 .270 [0 .475] 0 .452 [0 .50 9] 0 .498 [0 .594] 1.0 70 [0 .671] 1.653* [0 .669] 1.993* * [0 .680 ] 1.691 [1.0 48] -0 .799 [2.10 6] 18.68 [17.99] 0 .30 8* [0 .154] 0 .239 [0 .173] 0 .10 3 [0 .262] 0 .0 650 [0 .275] 0 .10 8 [0 .236] 0 .276 [0 .198] 0 .526* [0 .214] 0 .270 [0 .192] -0 .663 [1.0 94] 9.061 [9.358] 0 .244 [0 .231] 0 .269 [0 .281] 0 .147 [0 .297] 0 .412 [0 .311] 0 .834+ [0 .481] 1.0 0 3* [0 .418] 1.438* [0 .549] 1.364* [0 .655] 1.875 [1.250 ] -13.37 [10 .67] 0 .255 [0 .232] 0 .150 [0 .214] -0 .10 2 [0 .231] -0 .220 [0 .281] -0 .250 [0 .254] -0 .234 [0 .226] -0 .257 [0 .264] -0 .326 [0 .226] -0 .925 [1.228] 11.34 [10 .48] Observati ons 281 281 281 Adj usted R-squared 0 .881 0 .934 0 .710 Country Fi xed Effects Yes Yes Yes Ti me Year Dummi es Yes Yes Yes Cluster standard errors i n brackets * * p<0 .0 1, * p<0 .0 5, + p<0 .1 281 0 .90 7 Yes Yes Results for total tax revenue -1 0 Coefficient 1 2 3 4 Total Tax Revenue -4 -2 0 Time 2 4 Results for different tax bases Coefficient 0 1 2 -1 -1 Coefficient 0 1 2 3 VAT 3 Income Taxes -4 -2 0 2 4 Time 3 Coefficient 0 1 2 -1 -2 0 Time -2 0 Time Social Security Taxes -4 -4 2 4 2 4 Testing differences between means Total Tax Income Social Security VAT/GDP Revenue/GDP Tax/GDP Taxes/GDP -3 to -1 vs 2 to 4 1.372 Left (D&H) 4.94* 0.030 -3 to -1 vs 2 to 4 1.031 Left and Center Left (D&H) 3.36+ 0.071 -3 to -1 vs 2 to 4 3.230 Left (Murillo) 25.3** 0.000 -3 to -1 vs 2 to 4 1.074 Left and Center Left (Murillo) 3.17+ 0.080 Cluster standard errors in brackets ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 Row 1. Difference between means. 2. F-value. 3. p-value 0.221 2.550 0.115 0.186 1.610 0.209 -0.147 0.510 0.480 0.205 2.160 0.147 0.992 3.92* 0.050 0.673 2.79+ 0.100 3.192 16.07** 0.000 0.818 3.55+ 0.064 -0.215 0.930 0.338 -0.219 1.120 0.295 -0.961 7.59** 0.008 -0.298 2.530 0.117 Conclusions • Over the last 15 years, Latin America has been experiencing a shift to the left in government ideology, and an increase in tax revenues. In this paper, we study the link between these two trends. • We find that total tax revenues are between 1.4 and 1.9 percentage points of GDP higher under governments from the left, compared to others. Thus, our results suggest that ideology is partly responsible for increase in revenues in Latin America. • We find a substantial impact of ideology on income tax revenues, which increase between 0.7 and 1.3 percentage points of GDP under left-leaning governments, but no clear impact on VAT or social security taxes. • The fact that revenues increase on impact following the shift in government ideology suggests that the jump can be attributed to changes in government ideology, rather than changes in preferences or other factors that tend to change more gradually. Ideology and Tax Revenues in Latin America Ernesto Stein Lorena Caro Regional Seminar on Fiscal Policy Santiago, Chile, March 2013 Difference in Differences • For the purposes of this exercise, we now focus on government changes, rather than shifts in ideology • These changes may fit within 4 different categories – – – – Transitions from No Left to No Left (31) From No Left to Left (9) From Left to No Left (1) From Left to Left (3) • We only focus on the first two types, leaving out the other transitions • For each one of the transitions considered, we look at the two years before the arrival of the new president, as well as the first two of the new government. Difference in Differences • Model where: • “Left” takes a value of 1 within the 4-year window centered around a transition to the left. • For example, left=1 for Brazil from 2001 to 2004, even before the arrival of Lula in 2003. • “Post” is equal to 1 once a new presidential period begins. • For example, post=1 for Brazil for 2003 and 2004. • We interact “post” with our redefined “left” dummy. • A positive and significant coefficient for the interaction term is consistent with increased revenues for left-leaning governments Results: Differences in Differences VARIABLES Left Post Left*Post Log GDP per capita Constant Total Tax Total Tax VAT/GDP VAT/GDP Revenue/GDP Revenue/GDP (5) (6) (1) (2) 1.218+ [0.667] -0.117 [0.331] 1.603* [0.707] -1.255 [3.093] 23.23 [26.33] 0.984 [0.617] -0.162 [0.251] 1.542** [0.558] 1.376 [2.769] 14.58 [28.67] 0.0907 0.246 [0.381] [0.351] -0.0284 -0.00232 [0.184] [0.162] 0.144 0.237 [0.309] [0.268] -0.126 2.196 [1.547] [1.579] 4.683 -13.82 [13.18] [13.96] Income Tax/GDP (7) Income Tax/GDP (8) Social Security/GDP (9) Social Security/GDP (10) 0.648+ [0.360] 0.0221 [0.164] 0.918+ [0.546] 1.452 [2.041] -9.530 [17.35] 0.394 [0.368] -0.0182 [0.123] 0.762+ [0.406] 2.791+ [1.431] -13.36 [15.85] -0.116 [0.273] 0.0593 [0.123] -0.266 [0.289] 1.945 [1.658] -13.03 [14.10] -0.0475 [0.307] 0.0966 [0.127] -0.158 [0.275] 1.464 [1.675] 9.232 [17.67] Observations 158 141 158 141 158 141 158 141 Adjusted R-squared 0.907 0.927 0.922 0.935 0.696 0.807 0.916 0.926 Aditional Controls Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Country Fixed Effects No Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes Time Year Dummies Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Controlling for Openness, self employment, the ratio of the population under 15 and over 65 years old and natural resources rents as GDP percentage Cluster standard errors in brackets ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 Placebo regressions • Our βj coefficients compare revenues in left-bound countries in period j before/after the arrival of the left to revenues in these countries outside the event window and revenues in non-left-bound countries at any time. • So in period 1 (first period of left administration following ideology shift), we compare revenues in countries with new administration vs. countries that are at different points in the political cycle. • Could our results be capturing the impact of the political cycle? • Placebo regressions: we center the events around the last election prior to ideology shift in left-bound countries. • If the increase in revenues persists, it may be due to the political cycle effect, rather than ideology. Placebo regressions VARI ABLES Left* I -4 Left* I -3 Left* I -2 Left* I -1 Left* I +1 Left* I +2 Left* I +3 Left* I +4 Log GDP per capi ta Constant Total Tax Revenue/ GDP (1) VAT/ GDP (2) I ncome Tax/ GDP (3) Soci al Securi ty/ GDP (4) -1.264+ [0 .652] -1.0 23+ [0 .611] -1.231+ [0 .672] -0 .60 8 [0 .653] -1.10 6+ [0 .574] -0 .710 [0 .467] -0 .70 2 [0 .599] -0 .731 [0 .599] -3.639 [2.353] 42.68* [20 .13] 0 .0 195 [0 .310 ] 0 .237 [0 .237] 0 .157 [0 .349] 0 .222 [0 .341] 0 .0 0 582 [0 .321] 0 .121 [0 .20 1] 0 .0 411 [0 .20 7] -0 .0 326 [0 .280 ] -0 .926 [1.0 44] 11.31 [8.931] -0 .727* [0 .342] -0 .666* [0 .286] -0 .551+ [0 .324] -0 .469 [0 .336] -0 .438 [0 .315] -0 .418 [0 .280 ] -0 .381 [0 .335] -0 .571 [0 .420 ] 0 .0 0 692 [1.781] 2.449 [15.19] 0 .341 [0 .353] 0 .256 [0 .30 2] 0 .252 [0 .248] 0 .30 3 [0 .237] 0 .540 * * [0 .190 ] 0 .374 [0 .240 ] 0 .365+ [0 .198] 0 .178 [0 .271] -0 .222 [1.269] 5.40 1 [10 .82] Observati ons 281 281 281 Adj usted R-squared 0 .877 0 .932 0 .682 Country Fi xed Effects Yes Yes Yes Ti me Year Dummi es Yes Yes Yes Cluster standard errors i n brackets * * p<0 .0 1, * p<0 .0 5, + p<0 .1 281 0 .90 8 Yes Yes Placebo results: no change in tax revenue around last government change before ideology shift -3 -2 Coefficient -1 0 1 Total Tax Revenue -4 -2 0 Time 2 4 Placebo results: no change in tax revenue around last government change before ideology shift Coefficient -1.5 -1 -.5 0 .5 Coefficient -1.5 -1 -.5 0 .5 1 VAT 1 Income Taxes -4 -2 0 2 4 Time 1 Coefficient -1.5 -1 -.5 0 .5 -2 0 Time -2 0 Time Social Security Taxes -4 -4 2 4 2 4 Placebo results: testing differences between means Total Tax Revenue/GDP -3 to -1 vs 2 to 4 0.104 0.170 0.684 Cluster standard errors in brackets ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, + p<0.1 Row 1. Difference between means. 2. F-value. 3. p-value Left (D&H) VAT/GDP Income Tax/GDP Social Security Taxes/GDP -0.039 0.280 0.599 0.083 0.160 0.694 0.028 0.020 0.887