Inversión privada, gasto público y presión tributaria

Abstract

This doctoral thesis analyzes the determinants of private investment, using as a starting point Harberger´s hypothesis (1964), which predicts that changes in tax pressure and government´s performance significantly affect private investment. Chapter 1 looks for empirical evidence to show if a very interventionist government stimulates or not private investment in Latin America. Using the same model as Caballero-­‐ Urdiales y López-­‐Gallardo (2012), we extend their analysis from five Latin-­‐American countries to all Latin America. The results from our estimated elasticities show evidence in support of three hypothesis: (1) that tax burden (taxes on income and consumption) has significant effects on private-­‐investment; (2) that public investment has a crowding out effect with private investment; (3) and that in order to stimulate private investment, the government should have very little intervention. In chapter 2, and using the same model of Caballero-­‐Urdiales et al (2012) and Brito-­‐Gaona e Iglesias (2017a) that was applied to Latin-­‐American countries, we extend their analysis to the European Union (EU) in order to analyze the determinants of private investment. Results show consistent evidence with three hypotheses that are very different from those found in Latin-­‐America: First, in the short-­‐run, both consumption and income taxes have significant effects on private investment, while in the long run, only income taxes are significant although with a positive instead of a negative sign as in Latin-­‐America. This can be justified because in the EU and Europe in general, corporate income taxes are the lowest at world level and much lower than in Latin-­‐America. Risk investment is, in large extend, supported by those corporate firms, and increases in non-­‐corporative income taxes increase investment because investors look for fiscal benefits in corporate income taxes versus non-­‐ corporative ones. Second, opposite to what happens in Latin-­‐America, public investment has a crowding in effect with private investment both in the short and in the long run. And third, in order to stimulate private investment, government intervention has a positive effect both in the short and the long term, again opposite to what happens in Latin-­‐America. Finally, chapter 3 analyzes empirically the determinants of private investment in the 24 provinces in Ecuador in the 2007-­‐2014 period. Since our analysis is at the province level and we cannot use the exchange rate as the representative variable of the foreign sector (as it is done in all previous literature about the determinants of private investment –see Mendoza et al (1997), Caballero et al (2012) and Brito-­‐Gaona e Iglesias (2017a, 2017b)-­‐), the main novelty that we propose in this chapter is the use of remittances to capture the effect of the foreign sector in Ecuador. Our results show evidence in favor of three hypotheses: (1) in the short run, tax burden (taxes on revenue and consumption) has significant effects on private investment while in the long term only public expenditure and remittances are statistically significant; (2) public investment has a crowding out effect with private investment both in the short and long term; (3) and that in order to stimulate private investment, the government should have very little intervention, agreeing with the same conclusion found in Brito-­‐Gaona and Iglesias (2017a) for all countries in Latin America. These conclusions are 7 especially important in a country such as Ecuador, where according to CEPAL (2012), Ecuador has the highest fiscal expenditure in relation to gross domestic product (GDP) of Latin America. Therefore, we can infer that Ecuador is one of the countries with highest weight of its public sector, in relation to the GDP, since fiscal expenditure in 2012 is equivalent to 30.5% of the GDP while in Latin America is only 22.9%. Our empirical analysis shows also clear evidence of the importance that remittances are having in the increase of private investment in Ecuador.