Monetary-fiscal policy interactions and the price level:Background and beyond

The paper presents the fiscal theory of the price level in a variety of models, including endowment economies with lump-sum taxes and production economies with proportional income taxes. We offer a microeconomic perspective on the fiscal theory by computing a Slutsky-Hicks decomposition of the effects of tax changes into substitution, wealth, and revaluation effects. Revaluation effects arise whenever tax changes alter the value of outstanding nominal government liabilities by changing the price level. Under certain assumptions on monetary and fiscal behavior, the revaluation effect reflects the fiscal theory mechanism. When taxes distort, two Laffer curves arise, implying that a tax increase can lower or raise the price level and the revaluation effect can be positive or negative, depending on which side of a particular Laffer curve the economy resides. Jel Code: E31 · E52 · E62     

The social value of risk-free government debt

Can eliminating the stock of government bonds reduce welfare? When the government must raise revenue to pay interest on its bonds, the social value of government debt hinges on whether the benefits from greater portfolio diversification outweigh the costs of the revenue-raising efforts. A positive stock of debt is optimal only if interest payments are financed by an inflation tax, agents are not too risk averse, there is a government budget deficit, and the economy is on the bad side of the Laffer curve. Welfare is higher on the good side of the Laffer curve without bonds.     

Efficient Redistribution of Lifetime Income through Welfare Accounts*

Compared with a conventional tax–transfer system, individual welfare accounts can redistribute lifetime incomes at a lower efficiency cost. These welfare accounts employ mandatory contributions rather than taxes to finance social transfers to people of working age. We describe a design for welfare accounts that guarantees a Pareto improvement if behavioural responses to the accounts improve the public budget. We also develop a formula for quantifying the impact of welfare accounts on the government budget and economic efficiency. Applying the formula to Danish data, we find that the proposed welfare accounts would generate a Pareto improvement, thus improving the trade‐off between equity and efficiency. We discuss how the gains from welfare accounts can be distributed in an equitable manner.     

Political Sustainability and the Design of Environmental Taxes

This paper studies the issue of political support for environmental taxes. The environmental tax is determined by majority voting, given a refund rule that specifies the allocation of tax proceeds. The refund rule is chosen by a welfare-maximizing constitutional planner. We show that: (i) The equilibrium tax rate is increasing in the proportion of tax reductions based on wage incomes. (ii) If labor and capital income taxes are reduced in the same proportion, to keep the government's budget balanced, majority voting yields a rate of environmental taxation that is lower than the optimal (Pigouvian) level. (iii) To mitigate this negative bias, the government reduces wage taxes by a higher proportion than capital income taxes. (iv) The final outcome will either be the Pigouvian tax or else all reductions will be given in wage taxes. This depends on individuals' preferences for the polluting good as well as wage and capital income distributions.     

Education policies and optimal taxation

This paper studies the design of education policies in a setting in which optimal redistributive labor taxation is available. It is usually argued that the crucial parameter to guide education policy is the complementarity of education and ability. This is true only when labor supply is fixed or when income taxes are not allowed. I show that, if labor supply is endogenous and if the government can tax income in a nonlinear way, the crucial parameter is how the education elasticity of wage changes with ability. Taking the elasticity criterion into account, education subsidies are optimal in cases in which, under the complementarity criterion, education taxes would be optimal. To do this, I use an asymmetric information setting that motivates nonlinear taxation of income and education. JEL Classification H21 · H23 · H52 · I28     

A positive analysis of labor-market institutions and tax reforms

In this paper, we investigate the structure of the “Laffer curve” for taxes on labor and other factors of production, under different institutional frameworks of the labor market. Using a Cobb–Douglas production technology allows us to characterize important properties of the “Laffer curve” in terms of the wage share for a competitive labor market, the monopoly union model, the right-to-manage approach, the insider-dominated union, and efficient Nash bargains simultaneously. In this way, we are able to highlight the menu of factor tax systems, and thus of potential tax reforms available to a government, without perfect knowledge of the mechanism of the labor market. In particular, we show that the employment-maximizing tax system features a constant energy tax, while the energy mini-/maximizing tax system features a constant labor tax. We also illuminate to what extent these results must be modified if we either employ a CES production function, or if we allow for an endogenous reservation wage.     

Unemployment,Government Spending and the Laffer Effect*

The paper studies the effects of income tax rate changes in a general equilibrium model with frictional unemployment. Laffer curve effects, by which a tax rate reduction may increase the level of government spending or its share in output, are shown to be possible under certain conditions. These are the presence of unemployment benefit payments, government budget balance through fiscal spending adjustment and limited quantitative importance of labour reallocation costs. Endogenous government spending acts as a fiscal accelerator if the fiscal burden of unemployment benefit payments is large, but reduces the employment effects of tax rate cuts if it is low.     

Laffer effect, gross substitution, marginal cost of public funds and the level property of public good provision

This paper examines the Laffer effect in the Ramsey tax-model with linear consumption taxes and a representative consumer. It is assumed that the private goods and the public good are weakly separable. It is demonstrated that if all of the private goods are weak gross complements to each other, then the Laffer effect does not exist, in other words, higher tax rates can always achieve more tax revenue. In contrast, if all of the private goods are strict gross substitutes, then the Laffer effect does exist. Moreover, if all of the private goods are weak gross substitutes, then the government cannot fully acquire the leisure endowment through taxes on consumption goods. We also show that gross substitution works to raise the marginal cost of public funds.     

Taxes and stabilization in contemporary macroeconomic models

The role of proportional and procyclic labor income taxes for automatic stabilization with stochastic productivity is analyzed in a contemporary macroeconomic model based on imperfect competition. The importance of short-run nominal wage rigidity for the effectiveness of progressive taxes on labor income for stabilizing output and raising household welfare is examined in a model that yields complete analytical solutions with stochastic output shocks. Increasing the procyclicity of labor income tax rates raises welfare with and without rigid nominal wages in the model economy. With fully flexible prices and wages, a positive covariance between the distortionary tax rate and productivity reduces the volatility of production and employment. This effect disappears under nominal wage rigidity, although progressive taxation can still raise welfare by reducing the distortion caused by a proportional labor tax. With rigid nominal wages and flexible consumer goods prices, payroll taxes levied at rates that rise with output can serve as automatic stabilizers. JEL Code E62 · H20     

Taxation and Income Distribution Dynamics in a Neoclassical Growth Model

We examine how changes in tax policies affect the dynamics of the distributions of wealth and income in a Ramsey model in which agents differ in their initial capital endowments. The endogeneity of the labor supply plays a crucial role, as tax changes that affect hours of work will affect the distribution of wealth and income, reinforcing or offsetting the direct redistributive impact of taxes. We consider different ways of financing government expenditure and find that policies that reduce the labor supply are associated with lower output but also with a more equal distribution of after‐tax income. We illustrate these effects by examining the impact of recent tax changes observed in the United States and in European economies.     

THE ECONOMICS OF THE GOVERNMENT BUDGET CONSTRAINT

This article summarizes the simple analytics of the macroeconomiceffects of government budget deficits. The presentation is organizedaround three key relationships: the national income accountsbudget deficit identity, the deficit financing identity, andthe dynamic equation for the evolution of the ratio of publicdebt to gross national product. The national income accountsidentity highlights the effect of the deficit on domestic savingand investment and the current account. Examining the financingof the deficit brings to light the different kinds of macroeconomicimbalance the deficit can cause—as a first approximation,printing money excessively shows up as inflation, excessiveuse of foreign reserves leads to crises in the balance of payments,high foreign borrowing leads to a debt crisis, and too muchdomestic borrowing leads to high real interest rates and crowdingout of private investment. The debt dynamics equation is usedto show the long-run constraints on fiscal policy.      

Optimal taxation and welfare benefits with monitoring of job search

In order to investigate the interaction between tax policy, welfare benefits, the government technology for monitoring and sanctioning inadequate search, workfare, and externalities from work, we incorporate endogenous job search and involuntary unemployment into a model of optimal nonlinear income taxation. In this setting, the government faces a trade-off between boosting employment of low-skilled agents and raising work effort of high-skilled workers. If sanctions for inadequate search effort can be targeted at high productivity types for whom it is socially optimal to search, the government can afford to levy higher labor taxes on marginal workers without discouraging these agents from seeking work. This allows for lower marginal taxes on work effort of agents with a job. In contrast to workfare, job externalities in the private sector raise marginal tax rates, as the government attaches more importance to boosting employment of low-skilled workers.     

The effects of tax rate changes on tax bases and the marginal cost of public funds for Canadian provincial governments

The efficiency losses from taxation vary directly with the responsiveness of a government??s tax bases to tax-rate increases. We estimate the dynamic responses of tax bases to changes in tax rates using aggregate panel data from Canadian provinces over the period 1972 to 2006. Our preferred empirical results indicate that a one percentage point increase in corporate income, personal income, and sales tax rates is associated with a 3.67, 0.76, and 1.17 percent reduction in their respective tax bases in the short run. The corresponding long-run tax base semi-elasticity estimates are higher: ?13.60, ?3.63, and ?3.18, respectively. We use the tax base elasticity estimates to calculate the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) for the provinces?? three major taxes. Our computations indicate that the corporate income had the highest MCF and that the sales tax had the lowest MCF in all provinces in 2006. The MCF for the personal income tax ranged from 1.44 in Alberta to 3.81 in Quebec. Our results imply that there would have been significant welfare gains in 2006 from reductions in provincial corporate income tax rates. Our computations also indicate that the equalization grant formula may reduce the perceived MCF of the provinces that receive these grants, and that increases in provincial corporate and personal income taxes can cause significant reductions in federal tax revenues.     

Taxing women: A macroeconomic analysis

Based on well-known evidence on labor supply elasticities, several authors have concluded that women should be taxed at lower rates than men. We evaluate the quantitative implications and merits of this proposition. Relative to the current system of taxation, setting a proportional tax rate on married females equal to 4% (8%) increases output and married female labor force participation by about 3.9% (3.4%) and 6.9% (4.0%), respectively. Gender-based taxes improve welfare and are preferred by a majority of households. Nevertheless, welfare gains are higher when the U.S. tax system is replaced by a proportional, gender-neutral income tax.     

Why hasn’t tax competition triggered a race to the bottom? Some quantitative lessons from the EU

The integration of European financial markets in the early 1980s created an environment of near-perfect capital mobility across countries that had harmonized indirect taxes but maintained large differences in factor taxes. The years that followed witnessed several rounds of competition in capital taxes with puzzling results. Instead of the dreaded “race to the bottom” in capital taxes, the UK lowered its capital tax to a rate closer to those of France, Germany and Italy, while capital taxes changed slightly in these countries. The UK increased its labor tax marginally, but the other countries increased theirs sharply. This paper shows that these results are consistent with the quantitative predictions of a dynamic, Neoclassical general equilibrium model of tax competition that incorporates the key international externalities of tax policy operating via relative prices, wealth distribution and fiscal solvency. Tax competition is modeled as a one-shot game over time-invariant capital taxes with dynamic payoffs relative to a status quo calibrated to European data. The calibration is preceded by an empirical analysis that shows that the relationship linking taxes to labor supply and the investment rate in the model are in line with empirical evidence and that domestic taxes seem to respond to foreign taxes. The solutions of the games show that when countries compete over capital taxes adjusting labor taxes to maintain fiscal solvency, there is no race to the bottom and the Nash equilibrium is close to observed taxes. In contrast, if consumption taxes adjust to maintain fiscal solvency, competition over capital taxes triggers a “race to the bottom,” but this outcome entails large welfare gains. Surprisingly, the gains from coordination are small in all of these experiments.     

Labor-dependent capital income taxation

Capital taxation which is negatively correlated with labor supply is proposed. This paper uses a life-cycle model of heterogeneous agents that face idiosyncratic productivity shocks and shows that the tax scheme provides a strong work incentive when households possess large assets and high productivity later in the life-cycle, when they otherwise would work less. The system also adds to the saving motive of prime-age households and raises aggregate capital. The increased economic activities expand the tax base and the revenue neutral reform results in a lower average tax rate. The negative cross-dependence generates a sizable welfare gain in the long-run relative to the tax system that treats labor and capital income separately as a tax base. The reform, however, can hurt the elderly during the transition with a high marginal tax on their capital income.     

Optimal human capital policies

We analyze optimal income taxes and optimal schooling subsidies in a dynamic private information economy with observable human capital accumulation. We show that under plausible conditions the marginal schooling subsidies are positive and that they are zero at both endpoints of the skill distribution.We compute the optimal policies and evaluate their impact over the transition and at the steady state. We find that the optimal schooling policies are significantly smaller than the optimal marginal income taxes. If optimal schooling policies are introduced jointly with optimal income taxes then their welfare and aggregate effects are small. However, if income taxes are not set optimally then the optimal schooling policies have significant welfare and aggregate effects.     

Public pensions and labor supply over the life cycle

In order to remain fiscally solvent, governments of many countries have reformed their public pension schemes to encourage labor supply at older ages. These reforms include reductions in the generosity of public pensions and reduced penalties for working past the normal retirement age. In this paper, we consider how reforms to public pension systems affect labor supply over the life cycle. We put the recent empirical evidence on the effect of government pensions on labor supply in a life cycle context, and we present evidence on the effectiveness of tax reforms for stimulating labor supply over the life cycle. Our main conclusion is that the labor supply of older workers is responsive to changes in retirement incentives. The labor supply of younger workers is less responsive. Thus the trend towards lower taxes on older workers in many developed countries should continue to fuel their trend towards later retirement.     

The Laffer curve revisited

Laffer curves for the US, the EU-14 and individual European countries are compared, using a neoclassical growth model featuring “constant Frisch elasticity” (CFE) preferences. New tax rate data is provided. The US can maximally increase tax revenues by 30% with labor taxes and 6% with capital taxes. We obtain 8% and 1% for the EU-14. There, 54% of a labor tax cut and 79% of a capital tax cut are self-financing. The consumption tax Laffer curve does not peak. Endogenous growth and human capital accumulation affect the results quantitatively. Household heterogeneity may not be important, while transition matters greatly.