‘Linear’ income tax cuts: distributional effects,social preferences and revenue elasticities

The paper examines differential (yield-equivalent) distributional effects, social welfare and voting preferences as well as revenue elasticities of alternative ‘linear’ income tax cuts, each of which is progressivity-neutral with respect to a local progressivity measure. Judged by all criteria, there exists a unique preference for an income tax cut that preserves initial residual progression (or a tax increase that preserves initial liability progression).     

Economic Growth and Income Support Policy in Australia*

This paper examines the growth in welfare spending in Australia over the 20 years from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. Particularly for pensioners and beneficiaries with children, the levels of benefit and high tax rates implicit in the tax and social security systems are shown to create disincentives over wide ranges of private income. A careful examination of the evidence indicates that more generous levels of benefits had a modest but significant part in the growth of unemployment since 1970. The paper concludes by suggesting that the efficiency costs of meeting society's distributional objectives can be minimized by targeting assistance to the most needy and by the careful use of income testing.     

市场结构、环境税与福利效应分析

运用短期局部均衡分析方法研究完全竞争市场和垄断市场条件下环境税对社会福利的影响.结果显示:在完全竞争市场条件下,对企业征收环境税可以增进社会福利.而在垄断市场条件下,环境税的福利效应具有不确定性,这取决于垄断造成的扭曲程度.如果垄断造成的扭曲较小,环境税仍然可以提高社会福利.但无论是增进抑或降低社会福利,对垄断企业征收环境税都不可能实现最优化,因为环境税在矫正污染外部性的同时,垄断造成产量水平下降导致福利损失增加,所以只能追求一个次优的结果,次优环境税低于完全竞争条件下的标准环境税.     

Optimal Capital Income Taxation with Means‐tested Benefits

This paper studies the interaction between capital income taxation and a means‐tested age pension. Our results document that the existence of a social insurance program financed from general revenue puts an upward pressure on the optimal tax rate. We also show that there is a negative relation between taper (benefit‐reduction) and optimal capital income tax rates. The potential welfare gain from optimizing capital taxation in the presence of a universal retirement transfer system is relatively higher. However, when the transfer is substantially means tested, the gain is lower, because the means test effectively operates as a tax on retirement capital.     

Tax Progression and Human Capital in Imperfect Labour Markets

Recent contributions to the theory of taxation argue that tax progression raises welfare and employment in the presence of labour market imperfections. This literature takes the endowment of workers with human capital as given. The present paper analyses the effects of tax progression in a model with endogenous human capital formation. We show that the effect of tax progression on human capital investment depends on the deductibility of the cost of human capital formation. With full deductibility, tax progression raises employment and welfare. With incomplete deductibility, in contrast, the effect of tax progression on employment and welfare may be negative.     

Budget Incidence Reconsidered

The paper develops a theoretical framework for analyzing budget incidence. The welfare gain of consuming a public good is determined by the benefit approach. On this basis the incidence of taxation, benefits and net benefits is investigated. Measures of progression are proposed. It is shown that the joint incidence of governmental taxation and expenditure can be related to residual progression and the income elasticity of the marginal willingness to pay for the public good. An example demonstrates that progressive taxation can be overcompensated by a distribution of benefits which favors the rich.     

Electoral Systems, Legislative Process, and Income Taxation

We characterize the equilibrium income tax schedules and the optimality conditions under two types of political institutions, a two-party plurality system with a single district, and one with multiple districts where tax policies are determined through a legislature. It is shown that the exogenous social welfare functions in the optimal taxation literature can be endogenously determined by explicitly modeling the political institutions, which put different welfare weights on different subsets of the population. This paper also extends the Coughlin probabilistic voting model and the Baron–Ferejohn legislative bargaining model to a function space.     

The efficiency of social public expenditure in European countries: a two-stage analysis

Do European countries differ in the efficiency of their welfare policies? And which factors can account for such variability? To address these questions, we perform a two-stage efficiency analysis. First, based on a composite output indicator for social protection expenditure, we measure efficiency by means of the Free Disposable Hull and Data Envelopment Analysis techniques. Second, we perform an econometric analysis to identify the factors that can be associated to cross-country differences. We find that countries scoring higher efficiency have higher education and GDP levels, a smaller population size, a lower degree of selectivity of their welfare systems and a lower corruption level.     

高新技术企业认定与企业劳动雇佣

本文以2008–2020年沪深A股上市公司为样本,检验高新技术企业认定对企业劳动雇佣的影响及经济后果。以上市公司是否获得高新技术企业认定作为自然实验,采用双重差分法检验发现,高新技术企业认定显著促进了企业劳动雇佣增加,在金融发展水平更高的地区,这种促进效应更显著。进一步检验发现,税收优惠、政府补贴和银行贷款是高新技术企业认定对企业劳动雇佣的主要影响机制。最后,企业劳动雇佣的增加还显著促进了企业创新,提高了企业全要素生产率。本文不仅有助于从企业劳动雇佣视角丰富高新技术企业认定的经济后果的相关文献,而且还可以从高新技术企业认定的视角拓展企业劳动雇佣的影响因素的相关研究。本文的研究结果表明,高新技术企业认定不仅可以提高社会福利,还可以提高经济绩效,实现了《高新技术企业认定管理办法》的预期目标。本文的研究为进一步实施高新技术企业认定政策和扩大就业规模提供了理论依据和政策参考。     

Comparing ad valorem and specific taxes with corporate social responsibility

This paper examines the welfare ranking of indirect tax systems with corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a duopoly. Findings show that the two firms' cost and CSR asymmetries both play important roles. If the cost-efficient firm has a higher CSR level, the standard result in traditional tax theory is sustainable. Namely, ad valorem tax (specific subsidy) policies are considered superior to specific tax (ad valorem subsidy) policies. However, if the cost-inefficient firm has a significantly higher CSR level, the standard result is reversed. This result remains robust in an oligopoly model or under a tax revenue constraint.     

Is commodity taxation unfair?

In a model where agents have unequal skills and heterogeneous preferences about consumption goods and leisure, this paper studies how to combine commodity taxes and non-linear income tax. It proposes a particular social welfare function on the basis of fairness principles. It then derives a simple criterion for evaluating the social welfare consequences of various tax schedules. Under the proposed approach, the optimal tax should have no commodity tax for some range of consumptions, and income redistribution would feature high subsidies to the working poor. It is also shown that, even when the income tax fails to be optimal, commodity taxes may not improve social welfare.     

Welfare‐improving Coordinated Tariff and Sales Tax Reforms under Imperfect Competition

This paper studies the welfare effects of coordinated domestic sales tax reform associated with a reduction of the import tariff under imperfect competition. We set up a simple oligopoly trading model where domestic and exporting firms compete in the home market. We show that, if the initial levels of import tariff and sales tax are positive, there always exist welfare‐improving sales tax reforms. In some cases, a reduction of the sales tax accompanied by a reduction of the import tariff increases social welfare, whereas in other cases, raising the sales tax can increase social welfare.     

Optimal Income Taxation and International Labour Mobility

This paper considers how a linear income tax should be set optimally when individuals are internationally mobile. The optimum tax analysis is founded on a social welfare function where each individual counts in the social welfare according to residence time in the home country. The discussion of the optimal income tax is organized from two perspectives. The first relates to the optimum income tax when a uniform lump sum transfer is used, while the second concerns the optimal rate of tax when a transfer is used which depends on time of residence in the taxing jurisdiction.     

Evaluating social welfare and redistributive effects of Spanish personal income tax reform

Spain has recently concluded a process of wide-ranging reform of its personal income tax (IRPF), in force since 1992. The new IRPF is applicable from 1999 onward. The aim of this article is to analyse the implications of this tax reform for the distribution of personal income, and additionally to provide a comparative evaluation in terms of social welfare of both taxes. Empirical analysis is performed by a simulation exercise, employing the microdata contained in the Institute of Fiscal Studies’?IRPF Panel of Taxpayers. The analysis shows that the new IRPF induces a redistributive effect slightly lower than the old IRPF. The greater redistributive potential of the progressive structure of the new tax proves to be insufficient to compensate for the contrary effect caused by reduction in the level of tax liability. However, this new tax unambigously permits, in an inequality-adverse society, a higher level of social welfare than that attained by the old tax.     

The Welfare Effects of Environmental Taxation

Recent literature has investigated whether the welfare gains from environmental taxation are larger or smaller in a second-best setting than in a first-best setting. This question has mainly been addressed indirectly, by asking whether the second-best optimal environmental tax is higher or lower than the first-best Pigouvian rate. Even this indirect question has itself been approached indirectly, comparing the second-best optimal environmental tax to a proxy for its first-best value, marginal social damage (MSD). On closer examination, however, MSD becomes ambiguously defined and variable in a second-best setting making it an unreliable proxy for the Pigouvian rate. Given these observations, the current analysis reevaluates these welfare questions and finds that when compared directly to its first-best value, the second-best optimal environmental tax generally rises with increased revenue requirements. Even in cases where the second-best environmental tax is lower than its first-best value, the welfare gains may be greater than in a first-best setting. These results suggest that the marginal fiscal benefit (revenue recycling effect) exceeds the marginal fiscal cost (tax base effect) over a range of environmental tax rates that, for benchmark models, extends above the first-best Pigouvian rate. These findings reinforce the intuition that environmental policy complements rather than competes with the provision of other public goods.     

Redistributive taxation with heterogeneous relative consumption concerns

Abstract This paper studies the impact of redistributive income taxation in a society where only some individuals are motivated by relative consumption concerns. Introducing this heterogeneity raises theoretical challenges since (i) earned income becomes an imperfect indicator of underlying ability and (ii) relative concerns may be inadmissable in the social objective. A new behavioural model is developed in which only relatively‐concerned individuals choose work effort strategically. Linear tax/transfer systems schemes are then characterized and simulated for a series of welfarist and non‐welfarist social objectives, and for different degrees of preference heterogeneity. A key result is that a government which understands the extent of relative consumption concerns–but places no social weight on individuals with such preferences–nevertheless sets a significantly more progressive tax system than a government which ignores relative consumption motivations altogether.     

面向大学的社会捐赠行为的经济学分析

面向大学的社会捐赠本质上是一种经济行为。捐赠者的效用体现为明显的非物质形态,遵循效用最大化原理。捐赠者的捐赠行为是国民收入再分配的有效形式、改善社会经济福利水平的有效措施和形成社会资本的重要途径。我国税收制度对捐赠者行为有重要影响:所得税抵扣必然导致社会捐赠量的增长,其增长幅度在高税率条件下比在低税率条件下要大;其影响的敏感性对低收入捐赠者比对高收入捐赠者要强。     

税制改革、经济效率和社会福利——基于A-KOLG框架下的动态CGE模拟分析

在经典的世代交叠动态一般均衡(A-K OLG)模型的基础上,建立了一个由一系列不等式方程组所构成的"跨期动态"模型,反现实地模拟了提高间接税同时降低直接税对我国社会福利、经济效率的影响。与基期相比,减少对资本征税会带来福利增长0.34%(纯经济效率提高0.25%),减少对劳动征税会带来福利增长0.1%(纯经济效率提高0.02%)。该实证结果证明了间接税比直接税更有利于实现经济效率的理论观点。因此,提高直接税的比重是需要以一定的经济效率损失为代价的,实行该项举措应该权衡好各方面利弊、把握好改革时机。     

On Cost Benefit Rules for Green Taxes

This paper concerns the welfare effects of a green tax reform in a dynamic general equilibrium model with preexisting taxes on labor income and capital income. In comparison with previous studies on green taxes in dynamic models, which have focused their main attention on long run effects of such reforms, I derive cost benefit rules for a change in the tax mix by using the properties of the value function in optimal control theory. This enables me to relate the welfare effect of a change in the tax mix to responses in employment, the capital stock, (flow) emissions and the stock of pollution along the whole general equilibrium path. Another contribution of the paper is to examine under what conditions an emission tax, which is set permanently below the marginal damage of pollution, is welfare superior to an emission tax path that fully internalizes the external effect.     

Optimal Tax Policy under Environmental Quality Competition

This paper studies the socially optimal emission and commodity tax policy when consumers are willing to pay a price-premium for environmentally friendlier variants of a commodity vertically differentiated in environmental quality. The first-best levels of quality can be obtained by a combination of a uniform ad valorem tax and an emission tax (or a subsidy for buying green products). The first-best emission tax is higher than the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality. Regardless of environmentally conscious consumers, if only one instrument is available, the second-best emission tax is equal to the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality. A uniform ad valorem tax increases welfare only if the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality is low enough.