The proposed study empirically assesses the effect of national tax burden on economic burden, investigating whether countries that tax their economies more heavily grow faster or slower than economies with a lighter tax burden. The analysis will rely on panel VAR techniques applied to an extensive tax dataset assembled from OECD, IMF GFS, World Development Indicators, and ADB Key Indicators, covering data from 1970 to 2020, and including 113 countries. The study will also allow the possibility of non-linearities, time-variation, as well as the role of different types of taxes in driving the aggregate relationships.

JEL Classification: H20