The Substitution of Taxes for Oil Revenues by Designing a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE)

This paper aims to examine the replacement oil revenues with tax revenues in the Iranian economy. For this purpose, using dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) approach, a small open economy model consisting of two tradable and non-tradable production sectors is designed. In government revenue side, various taxes such as consumption tax, and income tax arising from the supply of labor and capital rent are included in the model. Model parameters were estimated by Bayesian approach using quarterly data for the period 1988-2014. Two scenarios were designed in order to replace oil revenues with tax revenues. In the first scenario, the government only receives oil incomes, and oil price is determined exogenously. In the second one, oil earnings are totally saved in the National Development Fund (NDF), and government spends only tax revenues to meet current and capital expenditure. The results indicate negative impact of higher taxes on macroeconomic variables such as economic growth and private consumption in the short-term and positive impact on GDP, consumption and investment in the long- term.