Redistributive Tax and Growth in a Model with Discrete Occupational Choice

An optimal redistributive tax-subsidy formula is derived for a growth model where income inequality is endogenously driven by an adult's choice of occupation between work and management. Investment in human capital is the engine of growth. The world's stock of exploitable knowledge as well as the economy's average human capital determine the potential rate of return from investment in human capital in an economy. How much available knowledge would be exploited in the economy depends on the proportion of innovators in our model. A redistributive tax reform impacts growth as well as income inequality via its influence over the occupational choice. The optimal redistributive tax rate is path-dependent in the sense that it depends on the initial wealth distribution. The normative implication of the model is that the optimal capital income tax rate could very well be positive if the initial wealth inequality exceeds a threshold. The optimal capital income tax rate depends inversely on the initial wealth inequality.     

EFFECTS OF TAXES AND BENEFITS ON INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN KOREA

This paper examines the redistributive effects of Korea's fiscal policies, including consumption taxes and in‐kind benefits. Using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey of 2007, we find that taxes and transfers reduce income inequality in Korea by 13.8 percent. Contrary to the popular belief that direct taxes are the key tool for redistribution, in‐kind benefits, direct taxes, and social security contributions all decrease the Gini coefficient by 6.7, 4.7, and 2.9 percentage points, respectively. The redistributive effect of consumption taxes is small and negative (?0.5 percentage point). Policy simulations indicate that education spending financed by the personal income tax has a positive redistributive effect and that the lower 70 percent of households enjoy positive net benefits. Spending targeting the poor has a strong redistributive effect, which implies low popularity because the majority of households face net losses.     

Inter‐Jurisdictional Competition for Firms*

Regions inhabited with an immobile population of disabled and able individuals compete to attract mobile firms that provide jobs. The redistributive goal of regional governments is to support the disabled, who cannot work. Able individuals may work, be involuntary unemployed because of frictions in the labor market, or choose to be voluntary unemployed. Labor force participation decisions depend on regional redistributive policies. Both the size of workforce and tax on firms affect profits and therefore, firms’ location decisions. Allowing regions to engage in tax competition may be efficient. If regions cannot tax firms, they compete by implementing inefficient redistributive policies.     

Environmental taxes with heterogeneous consumers: an application to energy consumption in France

This paper constructs a model with four groups of households who have preferences over labor supply, consumption of polluting (energy related) and non-polluting (non-energy) goods, and emissions. It quantifies the model for the French economy and computes its optimal tax equilibria under nine second-best tax regimes. We find that the redistributive role of environmental taxes requires the polluting goods to be taxed at a rate much below their marginal social damage. These goods may even require an outright subsidy if the society values equality ‘a lot’. Secondly, if environmental taxes that have an exclusively externality-correcting role, they benefit all types—although the gains are rather modest. The gains and losses become more substantial when environmental taxes have a redistributive role as well. Third, setting the environmental tax at its Pigouvian level, rather than its optimal externality-correcting-cum-redistributive level, benefits the high-income group at the expense of the low-income groups. Fourth, nonlinear taxation of polluting goods, and nonlinear commodity taxation in general, is a powerful redistributive mechanism. Fifth, introducing environmental taxes in the current French tax system, with its suboptimal income taxes, results in substantial welfare gains for the highest income group and a sizable loss for the least well-off persons.     

REDISTRIBUTIVE EFFECT OF INCOME TAXATION: DECOMPOSING TAX BASE AND TAX RATES EFFECTS

This paper introduces Gini-based decomposition formulae for the redistributive effect of income taxation. It examines the interaction between and the relative significance of tax base and tax rate components in the final determination of the overall redistributive effect. The resulting formulae can readily be applied to available income and tax statistics.     

The Impact of Inflation and Taxation on Tenure Choice and the Redistributive Effects of Home-Mortgage Interest Rate ReguIation*

Judy Yates (1981) notes the regressive redistributive impact of home-mortgage interest rate regulation and offers some explanations. This paper provides an alternative explanation of Yates' observations in terms of the interaction of inflation with the current tax system in Australia. A model of tenure choice in the context of inflation and taxation is developed. In explaining this phenomenon, the model also establishes the regressive nature of the tax subsidy to owner-occupation. Home-mortgage interest rate regulation is then introduced. This reinforces the redistributive bias in the housing finance market. The model is used finally to predict the impact of deregulation. It is concluded that deregulation by itself can only remove redistributive bias resulting from regulated mortgage interest rates. Reform of the tax system is required to eliminate the regressive redistributive effects of the tax subsidy to owner-occupation .     

A Common Base Answer to the Question “Which Country Is Most Redistributive?”*

We believe that what most authors have in mind when referring to the “most redistributive country” is a tax and transfer schedule that is most redistributive across all pre-tax and transfer income distributions. In order to measure each country's tax and transfer redistribution according to the same baseline, we suggest using the transplant-and-compare method of Dardanoni and Lambert (2002, Journal of Public Economics 86, 99–122) to establish a common base. The redistributive effects of countries’ tax and transfer schedules are illustrated by employing microdata on eight countries from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). Of these eight countries, Finland is found to be the most redistributive country, according to the common base method.     

Fiscal efficiency,redistribution and welfare

The expanding literature on fiscal decentralization (FD) emphasizes the role of institutional mechanisms for FD's welfare effects. We analyze the welfare effects of FD in case of a fiscal transfer mechanism that punishes inefficiency in tax collection and compensates for local income deficiency. In addition, a portion of transfers is earmarked for investment. Given a level of FD and these rules, the representative local government chooses its tax collection effort to maximize local utility. The solution of the model reveals that the stricter the redistributive rule, the higher are steady-state fiscal efficiency and welfare. While the effectiveness of the redistributive parameters increases with centralization of the revenue pool, it decreases with the tax rate. Both welfare and income distribution, on the other hand, improve with the degree of revenue centralization and the tax rate. Besides, fiscal efficiency and redistribution decrease with investment-earmarked transfers.     

Tax havens,income shifting,and redistributive taxation

This paper investigates the effects of tax havens on nonhaven countries’ redistributive policies. We consider that a nonhaven country contains individuals with different labor productivities. A tax is imposed on the income, and the revenues are evenly distributed. The tax rate is determined by majority voting, which reflects the median voter’s preferences. The presence of havens gives rise to the mobility of tax bases, which may increase the nonhaven country’s tax rate in two ways. First, it leads to a median voter with a lower productivity; second, it may enlarge the marginal tax revenue from raising the tax rate. In addition, we find that a stricter antihavens regulation may lower the tax rate. We further show that income shifting is likely to reduce the amount of the transfers. The case of tax evasion is also taken into consideration.     

Public goods provision,inequality and taxes

The impact of redistributive policies on voluntary contributions is still not well understood. While a higher level of redistributive taxation decreases the price of voluntary giving, it also changes the income distribution by decreasing income inequality. This paper provides a controlled laboratory experiment to investigate the net impact of the tax rate on public goods provision. The experimental findings show that while the participants decrease their voluntary contributions as the pre-tax income distribution becomes more equal, they increase their contributions with taxation. These findings have important implications for government policies regarding privately provided public goods.     

Public goods provision,redistributive taxation,and wealth accumulation

This paper presents an extension of a static model of public goods provision with redistributional taxation, as described by Uler [Journal of Public Economics 93 (3–4), pp. 440–453], as a dynamic model of wealth accumulation. Intertemporal consumption and saving behavior strongly affect the relation between redistributive taxation and charitable contribution. Indeed, the analyses presented herein reveal that more patience (i.e. higher saving) engenders a lower redistributional tax rate. However, the optimal redistributive tax rate is not zero because redistributive taxation improves the efficiency of providing public goods that are not improved by balanced growth. This paper fills the gap separating static analysis and dynamic analysis, and generalizes the results presented by static analysis.     

Capital tax competition: bane or boon

This paper reviews potential advantages and disadvantages of capital tax competition. Tax competition may introduce, mitigate, or exacerbate inefficiencies in both the private sector and the public sector. In different models, tax competition may either limit or increase public expenditures and taxes on mobile factors, with differing welfare consequences. We also discuss the implications of tax competition for redistributive policies and for policies dealing with risk, and we identify some of the possible empirical implications of tax competition.     

Redistribution and entrepreneurship with Schumpeterian growth

We examine the effects of redistributive taxation on growth and inequality in a Schumpeterian model with risk-averse agents. There are skilled and unskilled workers, and the growth rate is determined by the occupational choice of skilled agents between entrepreneurship and employment. We show that redistribution provides insurance to entrepreneurs and increases the growth rate. The effects on inequality are such that low tax rates increase inequality relative to laissez-faire due to changes in wages, but higher tax rates can simultaneously raise growth and reduce inequality. We contrast the optimal linear income tax with alternative policies for promoting R&D and find that it is preferable on both equity and efficiency grounds.      

Redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model

We investigate the redistributive potential of capital taxation in an intertemporal maximizing model of capital formation. First, even unanticipated redistributive capital taxation is severely limited in its effectiveness since it depresses wages. Second, under any convergent redistributive tax policy which maximizes a Paretian social objective, the capital income tax will converge to zero, independent of the factor supply elasticities. These results are independent of workers' holdings of capital.     

Public goods,taxation, and the distribution of income over time

With given fiscal and collective choice institutions, the provision and concomitant financing of a public good affect individuals' saving decisions and, hence, may affect the course of the income distribution over time. This paper focuses on this problem for the case of a constitutional democracy in which the major fiscal institution is a set of fixed tax shares and the collective choice mechanism is simple majority voting. The redistributive aspects, rather than the equity aspects, of alternative tax structures are explored.     

Monetary policy,endogenous transactions,and financial market segmentation

An endogenous financial market segmentation model is constructed to explore the role of costly credit as a medium of exchange in the monetary policy elasticity of financial market activity. Against inflation risk, credit is an alternative insurance device to a cash transfer from the financial market. In equilibrium, credit reduces the financial market activity rate. Monetary policy has redistributive effects across economic individuals. Inflation may not tax financial market non-participants. However, it may tax financial market participants by increasing the financial market activity rate. Welfare may increase and the optimal money growth rate can be positive.     

2011年个人所得税改革的收入再分配效应

本文考察2011年9月1日实施的个人所得税改革的收入再分配效应。根据目前我国分项课征的个人所得税征管模式,本文推导出税收的收入再分配效应指数按收入构成的分解方法。根据该分解方法的主要分析结果可概括为两点:其一,平均税率的高低是个税收入分配效应大小的主要决定因素,累进性则是次要的。由于平均税率的降低,本次税收改革弱化了本来就十分微弱的个人所得税的收入分配效应。其二,我国个人所得税整体累进性指数随工资薪金所得费用扣除的提高呈倒U型。十分巧合的是,本次改革确定的3500元免征额正好处于倒U型的最大值,超过3500元的费用扣除反而会削弱我国个税的累进性。     

Fiscal Policy and Equitable Growth

This paper continues the study of optimal fiscal policy in a growing economy by exploring a case in which the government simultaneously provides three main categories of expenditures with distortionary tax finance: public production services, public consumption services, and state-contingent redistributive transfers. The paper shows that in a general-equilibrium model with given exogenous fiscal policy, a nonmonotonic relation exists between the suboptimal long-run growth rate in a competitive economy and distortionary tax rates. When fiscal policy is endogenously chosen at a social optimum, the relation between the rate of growth and tax rates is always negative. These two properties suggest that an alternative set of government policy instruments affects the response of private sector investment to fiscal policy. Moreover, the different properties of exogenous and endogenous fiscal policy theoretically account for the difference in the relation between economic growth and fiscal policy in empirical studies.     

Federal tax arrears in Russia Liquidity problems,federal redistribution or regional resistance?*

Three hypotheses about the nature of federal tax arrears in Russia in the second half of the 1990s are tested empirically. Tax arrears can be a result of: 1) liquidity problems in firms, 2) redistributive subsidies of the federal government, or 3) regional political resistance to federal tax collectors. Liquidity problems in firms explain a large part of the variation in tax arrears. Regional political resistance to federal tax collectors was also an important factor: For a given level of liquidity, federal arrears accumulated faster in regions where governors had a larger popular base, in regions with a better bargaining position vis‐à‐vis the centre, and in regions with governors in political opposition to the centre. We find that patterns of federal arrears are inconsistent with the redistributive politics premise that redistribution favours jurisdictions with ‘closer races’ for the incumbent in the national elections. Variation in authorized tax deferrals can be explained in part by federal redistributive politics.     

Economic versus political symmetry and the welfare concern with market integration and tax competition

The paper studies the implications of increased capital market integration and the associated increased tax competition for world welfare. We consider a population with heterogeneous endowments of capital in a model of redistributive politics. We show that if countries have the same average capital endowments but differ with respect to the endowments of their decisive majority, autarky may be socially preferred to integration under any aversion to inequality. We then reverse the conclusion by assuming that the decisive majority has the same endowment but countries differ in their average capital endowments. In proving these results we show that integration may decrease world output and increase the utility of the poorest members of the economy.