Homeownership,Mobility, And Local Income Redistribution

Regions are characterized by different homeownership rates. Homeowners and renters differ in their mobility costs, renters having lower mobility costs. This paper analyses how the presence of those different types of households affects income sorting and tax differences between local jurisdictions. To this aim, we analyze a model of local income redistribution with mobile (renter) and immobile (homeowner) households. Linear income taxes finance a lump sum transfer. Policies are determined endogenously through voting. In such a framework, if there are no or only few homeowners, no income‐sorting equilibrium exists. Above a certain threshold for the homeownership rate we find an inverted U‐shaped relationship between tax differences and homeownership rates, such that tax differences between jurisdictions are highest for intermediate homeownership rates.     

Voting over selfishly optimal tax schedules: Can Pigouvian tax redistribute income?

This paper studies pairwise majority voting over selfishly optimal nonlinear income tax schedules proposed by a continuum of individuals who differ in privately observable skills and make consumption comparisons, which creates a negative positional externality. It shows that the tax schedule preferred by the median skill type will win the voting contest. Given a reference consumption defined as the average consumption in the population, all skills face the same Pigouvian tax rate in the utilitarian optimum, whereas in selfish optima high skills face a Pigouvian tax rate larger than that facing low skills, generating a novel income redistributive effect. Under a constant elasticity of labor supply, two more results are obtained. First, for Pareto, Champernowne, Weibull, and lognormal skill distributions, the selfishly optimal tax schedule facing high (low) skills tends to be more progressive when the bottom‐skill's (top‐skill's) status concern intensifies. Second, it identifies the conditions under which, in the voting equilibrium, high skills face higher marginal tax rates while low skills face lower ones than what they face in the utilitarian optimum.     

A Note on the Poll Tax

A poll tax is usually seen as the standard example of a lump sum tax and therefore as allocationally efficient. In this paper, it is shown that in a dynamic setting with endogenous fertility, a poll tax may yield a Pareto‐inferior outcome as compared to a percentage consumption tax.     

Economies with Multiple Public Projects

This paper discusses a general equilibrium model of an economy with multiple separately provided public projects. We assume an additively separable cost structure and consider valuation equilibria with separated finance systems, one for each collective good. Under non-Euclidean representation we show the decentralization of Pareto efficient allocations by valuation equilibria and the equivalence of the core and the set of nonnegative valuation equilibria. In the case of Euclidean representation, every Pareto efficient allocation is shown to be supported as an affine valuation equilibrium that is characterized by a personalized price per unit of each public good and a personalized lump sum tax or subsidy. These results complement and clarify already established insights into Lindahl pricing and its generalizations developed in the literature.     

Redistributing Gains from Globalisation*

This paper analyses the effects of redistribution in a model of international trade with heterogeneous firms in which a fair‐wage effort mechanism leads to firm‐specific wage payments and involuntary unemployment. The redistribution scheme is financed by profit taxes and gives the same absolute lump‐sum transfer to all workers. International trade increases aggregate income and income inequality, ceteris paribus. If, however, trade is accompanied by a suitably chosen increase in the profit tax rate, it is possible to achieve higher aggregate income and a more equal income distribution than in autarky, provided that the share of exporters is sufficiently high.     

Efficient Climate Policy with Internationally Mobile Firms

A major concern in the design of an incomplete climate agreement is thatfirms that use fossil fuels intensively may respond to emission regulationsby relocating their plants from cooperating to non-cooperating countries.This paper analyses how the cooperating countries might deal with the issueof firm delocation through emission taxes, trade provisions and alocalisation subsidy to mobile firms. It is shown that firms should not beinduced to stay in the cooperating countries by lowering emission taxesbelow the Pigouvian tax rate. Incentives to stay should be given partlythrough trade provisions and partly through a localisation subsidy. A secondbest solution without localisation subsidies is also discussed. In thatcase, the efficient emission tax is lower than the Pigouvian tax rate.Finally, the paper discusses the implications of the first best and thesecond best policy regimes for the pattern of firm localisation.     

The dual nature of public goods and congestion: the role of fiscal policy revisited

Abstract The role of fiscal policy is examined when public goods provide both productive and utility services. In the presence of congestion, the consumption tax is shown to be distortionary. Optimal fiscal policy involves using consumption‐based instruments in conjunction with the income tax. An income tax‐financed increase in government spending dominates both lump‐sum and consumption tax‐financing. Replacing the lump‐sum tax with an income tax to finance a given level of spending dominates introducing an equivalent consumption tax. These results contrast sharply with the literature, where the consumption tax is generally viewed as the least distortionary source of public finance.     

A Model of Tradeable Capital Tax Permits

Standard models of horizontal capital tax competition predict that, in a Nash equilibrium, states set tax rates inefficiently due to externalities—capital inflow to one state corresponds to capital outflow for another state. Researchers often suggest that the federal government impose Pigouvian taxes to correct for these effects and achieve efficiency. We propose an alternative incentive‐based regulation: tradeable capital tax permits. Under this system, the federal government would require a state to hold a permit if it wanted to reduce its capital income tax rate from some predefined benchmark. These permits would be tradeable across states. We show that, if the federal government sets the correct number of total permits, then social efficiency is achieved. We discuss the advantages of this system relative to the canonical suggestion of Pigouvian taxes.     

Capital Expansion, Endogenous Growth and Equilibrium Unemployment

A model is developed, which captures the interactions of unemployment and economic growth in general equilibrium. The economy evolves along a correct-expectations equilibrium path exhibiting endogenous job rationing, and productivity growth is driven by installation of new capital. Under the maintained hypothesis that the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour is less than unity, unemployment benefits are shown to shift up the whole path of equilibrium unemployment, leaving the economy with a higher natural rate of unemployment and lowering the long-run growth rate permanently. Investment tax credits financed by lump sum taxes on total income are capable of lowering the natural rate and raising the economy's growth rate.     

Fairness in tax compliance: A political competition model

This paper analyzes the political economy of income redistribution when voters are concerned about fairness in tax compliance. We consider a two‐stage model where there is a two‐party competition over the tax rate and over the intensity of the tax enforcement policy in the first stage, and voters decide about their level of tax compliance in the second stage. We find that if the concern about fairness in tax compliance is high enough, a liberal middle‐income majority of voters may block any income redistribution policy. Alternatively, we find an equilibrium in which the preferences of the median voter are ignored in favor of a coalition formed by a group of relatively poor voters and the richest voters. In this equilibrium income redistribution prevails with no tax enforcement.     

Regulating an Externality-Generating Utility Environmental Taxes Under Limited Information

Global warming is currently an important item on most nationalenvironmental agendas. In many countries, coal-fired electricity generatingstations represent an important source of greenhouse gases. We examinehow regulations to curb emissions affect public utility pricing regulationwhen regulators act non-cooperatively. We show that, when there is limitedinformation on fixed abatement costs, an environmental regulator prefersan emission tax over an output tax or a lump sum environmental tax. Thepublic utility regulator prefers the lump sum tax regime.     

Water applications and Pigouvian taxes to control irrigation-induced soil degradation

Salt and water transport external costs of irrigation are borne disproportionately by lower elevation farmers. The relationship between fields for an optimal Pigouvian tax plan varies considerably as the amount of available water changes, demonstrating that a simple rule cannot be relied upon. A numerical example demonstrates the optimal application pattern and Pigouvian tax plan in contrast to the sequential Nash equilibrium. Shadow values for water are used to argue that between distributaries, the second best optimum is unlikely to be equal allocation. Physical measures of soil state are also shown to be worse under the optimal plan, throwing doubt on their usefulness.     

Regular Distributive Efficiency and the Distributive Liberal Social Contract

We consider abstract social systems of private property, made of n individuals endowed with nonpaternalistic interdependent preferences, who interact through exchanges on competitive markets and Pareto‐improving lump‐sum transfers. The transfers follow from a distributive liberal social contract defined as a redistribution of initial endowments such that the resulting market equilibrium allocation is both: (i) a distributive optimum (i.e., is Pareto‐efficient relative to individual interdependent preferences) and (ii) unanimously weakly preferred to the initial market equilibrium. We elicit minimal conditions for meaningful social contract redistribution in this setup, namely, the weighted sums of individual interdependent utility functions, built from arbitrary positive weights, have suitable properties of nonsatiation and inequality aversion; individuals have diverging views on redistribution, in some suitable sense, at (inclusive) distributive optima; and the initial market equilibrium is not a distributive optimum. We show that the relative interior of the set of social contract allocations is then a simply connected smooth manifold of dimension n ? 1. We also show that the distributive liberal social contract rules out transfer paradoxes in Arrow–Debreu social systems. We show, finally, that the liberal social contract yields a norm of collective action for the optimal provision of any pure public good.     

Redistribution and Provision of Public Goods in an Economic Federation

This paper concerns redistribution and public good provision in an economic federation with two levels of government: a local government in each locality and a (first mover) central government. Each locality is characterized by two ability‐types, and the ability‐distribution differs across localities. The central government redistributes via a nonlinear income tax and a lump‐sum transfer to each local government, while the local governments use proportional income taxes and provide local public goods. We show how the redistributive role of taxation is combined with a corrective role, and how the central government can implement the second best resource allocation.     

Distribution of tastes and skills and the provision of local public goods

This paper introduces into the Tiebout model individuals with different skills. It is shown that the production techniques, the distribution of tastes and skills and intercommunity trade will affect the pattern of communities. In the suggested model competition with local public goods is Pareto optimal: communities will not be composed of identical people. The optimal solution requires that every community will tax everybody according to his marginal social cost. A Pareto efficient redistribution policy can be carried out only by a central government using lump-sum taxes. A federal income tax will affect community patterns and therefore is inefficient.     

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.     

Optimal unemployment insurance and redistribution

We characterize optimal income taxation and unemployment insurance in a search‐matching framework where both voluntary and involuntary unemployment are endogenous and Nash bargaining determines wages. Individuals decide whether to participate as job seekers and if so, how much search effort to exert. Unemployment insurance trades off insurance versus search and participation incentives. We also allow for different productivity types so there is a redistributive role for the income tax and show that a piecewise linear wage tax internalizes the macro effects arising from endogenous wages. Type‐specific lump‐sum taxes and transfers can then redistribute between individuals of differing skills and employment states. Our analysis embeds optimal unemployment insurance into an extensive‐margin optimal redistribution framework where transfers to the involuntarily and voluntarily unemployed can differ, and nests several standard models in the literature.     

Flat income taxation,redistribution and labour market performance

A flat tax rate on labour income has gained popularity in European countries. This article assesses the attractiveness of such a flat tax in achieving redistributive objectives with the smallest distortions to employment. We do so by using a detailed applied general equilibrium model for the Netherlands. The model is empirically grounded in the data and encompasses decisions on hours worked, labour force participation, skill formation, wage bargaining between unions and firms and a wide variety of institutional details. The simulations suggest that the replacement of the current tax system in the Netherlands by a flat rate will harm labour market performance if aggregate income inequality is contained. Only flat tax reforms that reduce redistribution will raise employment. This finding bolsters the notions from optimal tax literature regarding the equity-efficiency trade off and the superiority of nonlinear taxes to obtain redistributive goals in an efficient way.     

社会保障税与社会保障制度优化

社会保障税是指定用于社会保障的工薪税。本文分析了工薪税的税收归宿和劳动供给弹性的影响。当劳动供给弹性较小时 ,税收主要由劳动力负担 ,而且可能会增加就业压力 ;工薪税在劳动同质程度较高时可以取得较好的再分配效应。本文还描述了社会保障制度优化的理论过程。社会保障制度优化是指现收现付计划和强制储蓄计划的最优搭配 ,它以“黄金律”条件下的隔代帕累托改进为标准。就同代收入再分配而言 ,将收入再分配计划的目标定为提高受益人的受教育水平 ,而不是直接为其提供免费的社会福利 ,将有助于缓解收入再分配的代价。