We examine the role of fiscal policy in accounting for the remarkable rise of Ireland from one of Western Europe’s poorest countries to one of its richest in just a few years. We focus on the importance of business tax reform and overall changes in fiscal policy, in conjunction with other factors, which we model as a residual rise in Total Factor Productivity (TFP). We conduct our analysis using a two-sector, small open economy model where production requires tangible and intangible capital services, and where inflows of capital are limited by a collateral constraint (disciplined to account for the GNP to GDP gap). We find that the much discussed reductions of business taxes played a significant, but secondary, role in the Irish miracle. However, tax reform and other changes strongly reinforce each other. We also find that Ireland’s openness to capital movements was crucial: under the same driving forces, a closed economy would have experienced a significantly smaller rise in GDP.

我们考察了财政政策在说明爱尔兰从短短几年内从西欧最贫穷的国家到其最富有的国家的显着崛起中的作用。我们将重点放在营业税改革和财政政策整体变化以及其他因素的重要性上，我们将其建模为总要素生产率（TFP）的剩余增长。我们使用两部门，小型开放经济模型进行分析，在该模型中，生产需要有形和无形的资本服务，而资本的流入受到附带约束的限制（旨在解决国民生产总值与国内生产总值的差距）。我们发现，广受讨论的减少营业税在爱尔兰的奇迹中起着重要但次要的作用。但是，税制改革和其他变化相互促进。