Browsing by Author "Torregrosa Hetland, Sara"
Now showing 1 - 15 of 15
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Publication Open Access Colonial fiscal and welfare legacies: a comparative analysis of Ghana and Equatorial Guinea(2025) Vidal Pastor, Nicole; Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales; Ekonomia eta Enpresa Zientzien FakultateaEste proyecto tiene como objetivo estudiar y comparar los sistemas fiscales y las inversiones en bienestar implementadas por España y Reino Unido en sus colonias africanas, Guinea Ecuatorial y Ghana respectivamente, durante los siglos 19 y 20. Para ello, se analizarán los mecanismos fiscales empleados por ambos países en sus colonias, prestando atención a la estructura de los ingresos y del presupuesto en gasto público. En concreto, se examinarán los gastos destinados a la creación de un estado de bienestar como en educación y sanidad, junto con otros componentes clave del presupuesto como las obras públicas, administración o defensa. Si bien este estudio explora las diferencias en el desarrollo económico, y del estado de bienestar en estas colonias en el momento de su independencia, los resultados muestran que los contrastes no fueron significativos, lo que sugiere que otros factores contextuales pudieron haber desempeñado un papel más decisivo en sus trayectorias postcoloniales.Publication Open Access Did democracy bring redistribution? Insights from the Spanish tax system, 1960-90(Oxford University Press, 2015) Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Economía; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBEThe relationship between democracy, inequality, and redistribution has inspired extensive research, but consensus is still elusive. In order to contribute to this discussion, the author analyzes the Spanish case, where transition to democracy was accompanied by a comprehensive tax reform, aiming at increasing progressivity and revenue. But how effectively did it change the distribution of the tax burden? Was there a “fiscal revolution”? The results show that persistent regressivity (albeit decreasing) exacerbated income inequality, failing to attain convergence with more developed countries. The joint effect of the fiscal system, however, was slightly positive due to progressive social spending.Publication Open Access ¿Una fiscalidad para limitar las desigualdades?(Lengua de Trapo, 2024) Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Economía; EkonomiaHoy en día, el sistema fiscal español redistribuye poco, si nos comparamos con otros países de nuestro entorno europeo. Y recauda relativamente poco, lo cual limita a su vez el potencial para redistribuir por medio del gasto público. ¿Puede la Historia ayudarnos a entender por qué? Nuestro sistema fiscal actual se creó durante la Transición. Fue una parte fundamental de la misma: el cambio fiscal debía acompañar al cambio político, la democracia moderna debía acompañarse de unos impuestos modernos. Así se entendió, y así se llevó a cabo la reforma fiscal entre 1977 y 1986 con bastante éxito ¿ aunque también con algunas sombras. El argumento principal de este capítulo es que, a mediados del siglo XX, España había ¿perdido el tren¿ de la fiscalidad moderna. Los países de nuestro entorno la desarrollaron después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, durante la edad dorada del capitalismo: en un contexto económico de elevado crecimiento, limitada conflictividad social y limitadad globalización. Cuando España llegó a la democracia y se intentó implementar este modelo, varias décadas después, muchos aspectos habían cambiado.Publication Open Access Growth, inequality and extraction in Ibero-American democratizations(2017) Ducoing Ruiz, Cristián; Torregrosa Hetland, SaraWill democracy improve the distribution of economic welfare? Do dictatorships leave long-run legacies behind? In this paper we explore four Ibero-American countries with some common historical traits, but also different contexts: Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and Chile. The two Iberian nations suffered long periods of autocratic regime in the 20th Century, while our south American cases had relatively later and shorter dictatorships. We intend to assess the extent to which democratization brought about improvements in societal welfare, combining indicators of inequality and economic performance. We propose the applicability of the concept of Inequality Extraction Ratio, initially suggested for ancient societies but adapted by Milanovic (2013b) to the analysis of contemporary economies. Our hypothesis is that democratizations, while probably not able to achieve reductions in inequality, could have promoted decreases in relative extraction.Publication Open Access Income tax progressivity and inflation during the world wars(Oxford University Press, 2021-10-05) Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Sabaté, Oriol; Economía; EkonomiaThis paper studies the impact of inflation on income taxes in Sweden, the UK, and the United States during the world wars. As tax reforms were rising top marginal rates and reducing exemption thresholds, extraordinary levels of inflation eroded the real value of exemptions, brackets, and deductions. The micro-simulation of actual and alternative scenarios shows that inflation made the tax less progressive, particularly in Sweden during World War I and the UK during World War II. Nevertheless, its redistributive effect increased due to the related growth in tax revenue. Inflation contributed to transform a "class tax'' into a "mass tax".Publication Open Access Income taxes and redistribution in the early twentieth century(Wiley, 2025-06-26) Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Sabaté, Oriol; Economía; EkonomiaThis paper examines the distributive effects of personal income taxation in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States during the first half of the 20th century. We estimate the evolution of marginal and average effective tax rates across the income distribution and calculate the corresponding indices of progressivity and redistribution. Our results show that redistribution through income taxation increased during the period with varying intensity and mechanisms. During World War I, this was a joint effect of increases in the amount of revenue collected and progressivity. In contrast, during World War II, revenue increased again but progressivity diminished.Publication Open Access Inequality in tax evasion: the case of the Spanish income tax(Emerald, 2020-03-11) Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Economía; EkonomiaPurpose: the purpose of this paper is to estimate tax evasion and its impact on progressivity, redistribution and the measurement of inequality, using microdata from the Spanish income tax for 2001-2004. Design/methodology/approach: the approach follows Feldman and Slemrod (2007) by exploiting the relation of charitable donations with the composition of income but introduces two methodological innovations, which could be useful for further studies: correction for sample selection with a Heckman two-step setting and the calculation of different evasion rates for top incomes with an interaction term. Findings: evasion in capital incomes was significant throughout these years. Financial incomes were reported at around 50-70 per cent of their real value, with the lowest estimates corresponding to the top decile. Revenues from fixed capital display similarly low compliance rates for the top 10 per cent. Tax evasion in self-employment incomes (direct assessment) is estimated at 20 per cent for 2001. Mostly because of a composition effect, this means that fraud was higher at the top of the income distribution, thus having a regressive impact. Inequality statistics and top income concentration estimates should, therefore, be revised upwards. Originality/value: this is the first paper to estimate the distributive impacts of tax evasion in Spain, and one of very few internationally.Publication Open Access Limits to redistribution in late democratic transitions: the case of Spain(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Economía; EkonomiaThis chapter reviews the experience of one country from the European periphery, Spain, in the period 1960 to 1990. It addresses the possibilities to build up an operative welfare state after recent democratization¿past the golden age of economic growth in Western economies, and during the second globalization. The new context made it difficult to develop determined redistributive policies where they had been absent before. Economic distress, increasing capital mobility, and new tax ideas challenged the chances of progressive taxation. Furthermore, the recent dictatorship cast long-lasting shadows in the new representative institutions. This study of the Spanish experience is thus an analysis of time-specific and polity-specific constraints on redistribution, which other new democracies might have faced or could encounter in the near future.Publication Open Access Natural resources curse in the long run? Bolivia, Chile and Peru in the nordic countries' mirror(MDPI, 2018-03-26) Ducoing Ruiz, Cristián; Peres-Cajías, José; Badia-Miró, Marc; Bergquist, Ann-Kristin; Contreras, Carlos; Ranestad, Kristin; Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Economía; EkonomiaThe new estimates of the Maddison Project show that GDP per capita ratio at purchasing power parity (ppp) between Bolivia and Finland has changed from 0.68 ca. 1850 to 0.16 in 2015; similarly, that between Chile and Norway from 0.65 to 0.28. The aim of this article is to present a review of the literature and available quantitative evidence to understand how these extreme differences became possible between countries with similarly enormous natural resource endowments. Specifically, the article seeks to: (a) identify some stylized facts that may help understand the divergence between Andean and Nordic countries; (b) identify key historical processes that explain the divergent effect of natural resource abundance in Andean and Nordic economies. In order to achieve these objectives, four topics are covered: GDPpc, population, trade and taxation. The analysis comprises three Nordic countries (Finland, Norway and Sweden) and three Andean countries (Bolivia, Chile and Peru) from the mid-Nineteenth Century to present day. The sample size, time span covered and thematic approach provide new evidence regarding previous work.Publication Open Access The prevalence of publicly stimulated innovations: a comparison of Finland and Sweden, 1970-2013(Elsevier, 2019-02-18) Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Pelkonen, Antti; Oksanen, Juha; Kander, Astrid; Economía; EkonomiaWhile the role played by the state in stimulating innovation in the private sector has been a prevalent interest in innovation research, studies analysing the impacts of public interventions have usually focused on individual policies, programs or projects. Public stimulation is hence often studied from a relatively restricted and temporarily confined perspective, leaving a macro-level and longer-term perspective unrecognized. This article provides further evidence on the matter by examining how many innovations in Finland and Sweden have been publicly stimulated through funding or research collaboration, over a period of more than four decades (1970-2013). Our main source is a new innovation database constructed following the Literature Based Innovation Output (LBIO) method, which gathers the most significant innovations of both countries for the study period, totalling approximately 4100 Swedish and 2600 Finnish innovations. Our results indicate that the public sector has played a very prominent role in stimulating private innovation in both countries, and with an increasing trend. This is especially true for Finland, where 35-55% of the innovations of the period have been stimulated by public funding and 25-65% by collaboration with public research. In Sweden, the share of publicly stimulated innovations has been somewhat lower and erratic, but has increased over time.Publication Open Access Resource abundance and public finances in five peripheral economies, 1850s-1930s(Elsevier, 2022-01-13) Peres-Cajías, José; Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Ducoing Ruiz, Cristián; Economía; EkonomiaThe resource curse literature has established that taxation of natural resources might limit the long-term development of fiscal capacity in resource-rich countries. This article explores if, and how, natural resource abundance generates fiscal dependence on natural resource revenues. We compare five peripheral economies of Latin America (Bolivia, Chile, Peru) and Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden) over a period of 90 years, between 1850 and 1939. Both groups were natural resource abundant, but in the latter natural resource dependence decreased over time. By using a novel database, we find that fiscal dependence was low in Norway and Sweden, while high and unstable in Bolivia, Chile and Peru. This suggests that natural resource abundance should not be mechanically linked to fiscal dependence. An accounting identity shows that sudden increases in fiscal dependence were related to both economic and political factors: countries' economic diversification, and attitudes of the relevant political forces about how taxation affects the companies operating in the natural resource sector.Publication Open Access Sistema fiscal y redistribución: La transición fiscal española (1960-1990)(Universidad de Valparaiso, 2016) Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Economía; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBELa tesis analiza el sistema fiscal español entre los años 1960 y 1990, con especial atención a sus efectos en la distribución de la renta. Se abordan las reformas que tuvieron lugar durante la transición a la democracia, aportando una evaluación cuantitativa consistente de los cambios. A causa de la larga dictadura sufrida por el país entre 1936/39 y 1976, España introdujo las ideas fiscales del siglo XX con considerable retraso respecto de sus vecinos, manteniendo largamente un sistema de impuestos bajos, regresivos e ineficientes. Con el retorno de la democracia, diversas leyes de reforma fiscal pretendieron hacer el sistema más progresivo y capaz de generar mayores ingresos públicos, para la financiación de un incipiente Estado del Bienestar. El principio de progresividad, sin embargo, tuvo una aplicación práctica limitada. Los cálculos de la tesis lo muestran así, estimando la distribución resultante de la carga fiscal, la persistencia en las desigualdades de renta, y el fuerte impacto del fraude en la imposición personal. La interpretación ofrecida se sitúa entre el legado de la dictadura en la configuración del régimen parlamentario y el nuevo contexto económico, que combinaba la ralentización del crecimiento con una mayor apertura y movilidad internacional del capital.Publication Open Access The spanish fiscal transition: tax reform and inequality in the late twentieth century(Palgrave Macmillan, 2021-09-19) Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Economía; EkonomiaThis book provides an analysis of the process and outcomes of the tax reform, with a focus on progressivity, redistribution, and inequality. Between 1977 and 1986, Spain underwent a comprehensive tax reform which shaped its fiscal system until today. It was made in connection with the transition to democracy and indeed was understood as a fundamental part of the political change. The book situates the reform both within Spanish history and international trends in tax systems and connects it to the expansion of the welfare state and regional decentralization in Spain. The analysis reveals that the tax system failed to attain progressivity, and significant levels of fraud had a noticeable impact on inequality. Because of this, fiscal redistribution remained limited. In the new political economy of the second globalization, late democratic and fiscal transitioners were unable to emulate the path of the welfare state forerunners.Publication Open Access Sticky income inequality in the Spanish transition (1973-1990)(Cambridge University Press, 2016) Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Economía; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBEEste artículo analiza la evolución de la desigualdad de rentas en España durante la transición a la democracia, proponiendo un método para corregir la infra-declaración de ingresos en las Encuestas de Presupuestos Familiares. La contribución es doble: la metodología, basada en la discrepancia entre rentas y gastos y en el ajuste a Contabilidad Nacional, puede ser de utilidad para fuentes históricas similares en otros países. En segundo lugar, su aplicación resulta en una interpretación alternativa en este caso, al cambiar los niveles de desigualdad y también la tendencia observada. Si la literatura anterior había tratado de una sustancial mejora en la distribución, vinculada a la democracia, tras el ajuste efectuado la desigualdad en la renta disponible se muestra bastante persistente.Publication Embargo War inflation and taxation(Routledge, 2025-05-30) Sabaté, Oriol; Torregrosa Hetland, Sara; Economía; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBEWarfare has been commonly associated with increasing levels of inflation, with important implications for tax systems. In this chapter, we first review the literature on war finance and inflation, considering both the fiscal causes of inflation during wartimes and the effects of inflation on tax revenues. Second, we focus on developments in the income tax during the World Wars, building upon our previous work (Torregrosa-Hetland and Sabaté, 2022). We describe the mechanisms through which inflation affected progressivity and redistribution, by reducing the real value of exemptions, brackets and deductions ("bracket creep"). This led to the incorporation of new taxpayers into the income tax system and increased significantly the tax burden of those already included. Third, we study the issue of income tax legitimacy in the face of war inflation using a novel dataset of parliamentary debates and press articles in the United Kingdom. Other episodes of bracket creep have been associated with legitimacy challenges. We use natural language processing techniques to examine whether the effects of inflation on tax progressivity were a topic of discussion in national parliaments and the press, and the extent to which MPs and journalists identified inflation as a challenge to income tax legitimacy.