Artikel

Tax reforms and Google searches: The case of Spanish VAT reforms during the great recession

We propose a method to capture the effect of tax reforms on consumer's readiness to buy using Google searches as a proxy. We use the Spanish 2010 and 2012 VAT reforms as a case of study. We use a regression discontinuity design taking advantage of the fact that the Spanish 2010 and 2012 VAT reforms had a sharp implementation date, which implies that from one day to another the tax rate for most goods was different, while other factors likely to influence consumer behaviour were similar on the days around the cut-off. We find a significant causal effect of the implementation of the reform on Google searches of durable goods, while we do not find any effect for non-durable goods. These results are in line with previous theoretical and empirical evidence according to which tax reforms cause consumers to modify more their readiness to buy durable goods. We also explore the effect of the reforms on readiness to buy specific goods such as movie tickets by taking advantage of a control group formed by similar leisure items that were unaffected by the 2012 reform.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Journal: SERIEs - Journal of the Spanish Economic Association ; ISSN: 1869-4195 ; Volume: 10 ; Year: 2019 ; Issue: 3/4 ; Pages: 321-336

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate
Microeconomic Policy: Formulation, Implementation, and Evaluation
Thema
Private consumption
Value-added tax
Indirect taxation
Unconventional fscal policy
Google Trends
Big data

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Artés, Joaquín
Botello Mainieri, Ana Melissa
Sánchez-Fuentes, A. Jesús
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Springer
(wo)
Heidelberg
(wann)
2019

DOI
doi:10.1007/s13209-019-00204-1
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Artikel

Beteiligte

  • Artés, Joaquín
  • Botello Mainieri, Ana Melissa
  • Sánchez-Fuentes, A. Jesús
  • Springer

Entstanden

  • 2019

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