This paper applies cointegration and error-correction models to test the causal relation between government expenditures and tax revenues in Korea over the period 1953-1995. These econometric techniques have recently gained attention in empirical rese...
This paper applies cointegration and error-correction models to test the causal relation between government expenditures and tax revenues in Korea over the period 1953-1995. These econometric techniques have recently gained attention in empirical research not only for simplicity and relevance in analysing time-series data but also for ensuring stationary and providing additional channels through which Granger causality could emerge if two variables are cointegrated.
We performed the unit root tests in levels and first differences. The levels of tax revenue and government expenditure variables are non-stationary, but the first differences of that variables are stationary indicating that these variables are in fact integrated of order one, I(1) . We performed Engle Granger cointegration tests by estimating the cointegrating equation in order to obtain the residuals used in the error-correction models.
We are interesting to see what causes what, that is, the direction of causality between tax revenues and government expenditures. The empirical results obtained from the error-correction models indicate that causality runs from government expenditures to tax revenues. This is based on the significance of the error-correction coefficient, η. The results imply that higher government expenditures would lead to higher tax revenues.