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The Welfare Implications of Fiscal Consolidations in Low-Income Countries

We quantitatively investigate the welfare costs of fiscal consolidations in low income countries through value added tax (VAT), personal income tax (PIT), and corporate income tax (CIT). We extend the standard heterogeneous agents incomplete markets model by including multiple sectors and regions to capture salient features of low-income countries. We find that VAT has the least efficiency costs but reduces welfare substantially by widening the rural-urban gap. Despite causing larger output loss, PIT and CIT have less welfare costs because tax incidence is distributed evenly between regions. For all the taxes considered, uninsurable idiosyncratic risks cause sizable distributional costs.