Optimal Taxation in Life-Cycle Economies

We use a very standard life-cycle growth model, in which individuals have a labor-leisure choice in each period of their lives, to prove that an optimizing government will almost always find it optimal to tax or subsidize interest income. The intuition for our result is straightforward. In a life-cycle model the individual's optimal consumption-work plan is almost never constant and an optimizing government almost always taxes consumption goods and labor earnings at different rates over an individual's lifetime. One way to achieve this goal is to use capital and labor income taxes that vary with age. If tax rates cannot be conditioned on age, a nonzero tax on capital income is also optimal, as it can (imperfectly) mimic age-conditioned consumption and labor income tax rates. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E62, H21.     

EFFECTIVE RATES OF ASSISTANCE FOR NORWEGIAN INDUSTRIES

We measure the effective assistance to 24 Norwegian private industries in 1989 and 1991 from government budgetary subsidies, indirect commodity taxes, import protection through nominal tariffs and non-tariff barriers, and electricity market distortions. The assistance effects are measured by the change in the net-of-tax value added price due to a removal of the policy measures considered. Most industries were effectively assisted, but the effective assistance differs widely between industries, indicating the overall distortive effect on the industry structure. Agriculture, Food Processing and Manufacture of Beverages and Tobacco stand out as the most assisted industries. Budgetary subsidies and non-tariff barriers had the strongest effective assistance effect.     

Equity,efficiency, and the structure of indirect taxation

Optimal tax formulae are derived and optimal tax rates calculated for the case where there are many consumers, an income tax is impossible and the government has to trade off efficiency in order to improve the real distribution of income. Consistent aggregation assumptions are used to permit the derivation of simple tax rules depending only on the behaviour of the average consumer and of a socially representative consumer. Calculations for the U.K. in 1972 show how subsidies and taxes vary with the government's revenue requirement and with the degree of egalitarianism in the social welfare function.     

Trade taxes and international investment

Abstract .  This paper demonstrates that international investment disturbs the conventionally understood equivalence between import tariffs and export taxes. Fundamentally, remittances to foreigners introduce an additional pecuniary channel between countries so that two-good Lerner Symmetry generally will not hold. Moreover, because tariffs subsidize investors in the local import competing sector while export taxes can extract rent from foreign investors in the export sector, the pattern of international investment will influence government preferences over trade policy  instruments  as well as levels. Notably, trade tax symmetry is restored by introducing a third policy tool in the form of a direct a tax on international remittances.     

The CBI Industrial Trends Survey — A Statistical Note

As the high tariff barriers of the inter-war period have been gradually reduced over the past twenty years, non-tariff factors have taken on an increasingly important role. One of the more notable of these factors is a country's level of excise taxes. Since these taxes are applied to both imports and domestic production, it is obvious that a given percentage change in excise taxes will have a smaller influence on trade than an equal percentage change in tariffs. Nevertheless, excise takes can be used to some extend as a substitution for tariffs. Hence, it would seem desirable to determine the degree to which such substitution will affect the volume of imports.

The role of taxes and tariffs in trade models has been considered in a number of theoretical discussions. ^{1 1} The effects of commodity taxes on the terms of trade and on domestic welfare have been analysed by MUNDELL, (1960), and by FRIEDLAENDER and VANDENDORPE (1968). However, virtually no effort has been made to examine the relationships among excise taxes, tariffs and imports in order to determine the extent to which countries can use excise taxes as a device to counterbalance the movement toward freer trade through the aegis of G.A.T.T. This study will attempt to rectify this omission.     

Economic integration and tax policy with endogenous foreign firm ownership

This paper analyses the impact of economic integration on tax policy in a model where corporate taxation is motivated by the desire to tax profits accruing to foreigners and the number of foreign owned firms is endogenous. Increasing economic integration is modeled as a decline in trade costs or tariffs. It turns out that declining trade costs lead to increasing profit taxes if the government may use import tariffs. If tariffs are not available, declining trade costs induce profit taxes to decline as well. A mandatory reduction in tariffs also triggers profit tax reductions. We conclude that the existence of foreign firm ownership may fail to prevent profit taxes from declining as economic integration proceeds.     

Fiscal illusion and the demand for government expenditures in the UK

This paper examines whether variables commonly used to test standard fiscal illusion arguments (that tax structure affects voters' demands for public goods) can help explain the time-series behaviour of government expenditure in the UK during 1955–1994. We modify a standard median voter model to incorporate fiscal illusion via ‘less visible' (indirect) taxes and deficit financing. While we find evidence that both are positively associated with increased government spending, this would appear to be consistent with both fiscal illusion and standard efficiency arguments.     

Tariff Wars and Trade Deals with Costly Government

The authors study a simple model of tariff wars and trade deals in which government revenue collection and disbursement uses resources. The introduction of costly governments leads to lower non‐cooperative tariffs, the possibility that a less costly government may win a tariff war, and fully cooperative trade deals where countries lower tariffs but do not eliminate them, even with lump‐sum taxes and transfers.     

Trade,environment, and income inequality: An optimal taxation approach

In a small open economy, how should a government pursuing both environmental and redistributive objectives design domestic taxes when redistribution is costly? And how does trade liberalization affect the economy's levels of pollution and inequalities, when taxes are optimally and endogenously adjusted? Using a general equilibrium model under asymmetric information with two goods, two factors (skilled and unskilled labor), and pollution, this paper characterizes the optimal mixed tax system (nonlinear income tax and linear commodity and production taxes/subsidies) with both production and consumption externalities. While optimal income taxes are not directly affected by environmental externalities, conditions are derived under which under‐ or over‐internalization of social marginal damage is optimal for redistributive considerations. Assuming that redistribution operates in favor of the unskilled workers and that the dirty sector is intensive in unskilled labor, simulations suggest that trade liberalization involves a clear trade‐off between the reduction of inequalities and the control of pollution when the source of externality is only production; this is not necessarily true with a consumption externality. Finally, an increase in the willingness to redistribute income toward the unskilled results paradoxically in less pollution and more income inequalities.     

Endogenous trade policy in general equilibrium: An interaction of redistribution rule,trade openness,and labor market condition

Using a general equilibrium framework, the paper derives trade policy endogenously for a small country. It shows that, contrary to the existing literature, a lobbying industry is not guaranteed trade protection; it may even face trade taxes. Besides lobbying, trade policy depends on other factors such as the trade revenue distribution rule, income distribution across groups, trade openness, factor substitutability in production, industry employment size, and labor market flexibility. The paper also shows that the observed phenomenon of government preference for import tariffs over export subsidies—a long overdue puzzle—is an inherent outcome of lobbying equilibrium. It also shows that trade policies such as import tariffs and export taxes that have the same impact on economic market—Lerner symmetry (1936)—are driven by the same forces in the political market.     

Endogenous human capital accumulation, comparative advantage and direct vs. indirect redistribution

Recently, several papers have reexamined the so-called production efficiency theorem and the Atkinson and Stiglitz theorem on commodity taxes in the optimal taxation literature. Naito [J. Public Econ. 71 (1999) 65] showed that indirect redistribution through production distortion or consumption distortion can Pareto-improve welfare and that the two theorems do not necessarily hold when different factors are imperfect substitutes and factor prices are endogenous. On the other hand, Saez J. Public Econ. (2002) forthcoming argued that in the long run, where human capital accumulation is endogenous, the two theorems are still valid. This paper develops reasonable alternative models where individuals accumulate human capital based on their comparative advantage. The present paper shows that the production efficiency theorem is not necessarily valid and that indirect redistribution from the able to the less able such as tariffs and production subsidies can increase efficiency even when skill accumulation is endogenous.     

Trade Liberalization in Egypt

A computable general equilibrium model of Egypt is developed to analyze proposed reforms in its trade policies, including a partnership agreement with the European Union. The model has multiple trading regions and allows for administrative trade barriers and tariffs. The paper reports computations of the revenue impacts of trade liberalization and the required changes in distortionary commodity taxes to maintain a fixed real government budget. Egypt's greatest potential gains come from removing its administrative trade barriers while adopting globally free trade. The partnership agreement with the EU could lower or raise Egypt's welfare, depending on prior trade reform.     

Optimal tax perturbations

The paper considers an economy with H households, N+1 commodities and M fixed factors with commodity taxes and government expenditures on goods and services. The paper studies under what conditions (small) Pareto improving tax changes exist, i.e., tax changes which increase the utility of each household in the economy. The basic analytical technique used is just the usual comparative statics apparatus, except that duality theory is used in order to simplify the computations. The paper derives both the changes in prices and in real incomes that are induced by (small) changes in exogenous tax variables (differential real income balanced budget incidence analysis).     

Social Comparisons and Optimal Taxation in a Small Open Economy

In this paper, we analyze how international capital mobility affects the optimal labor and capital income tax policy in a small open economy when consumers care about relative consumption. The main results crucially depend on whether the government can tax returns on savings abroad. If the government can use flexible residence‐based capital income taxes, then the optimal policy rules from a closed economy largely carry over to the case of a small open economy. If it cannot, then capital income taxes become completely ineffective. The labor income taxes must then indirectly also reflect the corrective purpose that the absent capital income tax would have had.     

Building a computable general equilibrium tax model for Italy

In this paper, we develop a multi-sectoral computable general equilibrium tax model for Italy allowing for a number of fiscal tools. We illustrate the methodology for modelling and accommodating the full range of direct and indirect taxes into the national general equilibrium model. In particular, we build a commodity tax matrix by commodity, source, user and tax type; and a production tax matrix by industry and tax type. We also put a special emphasis on the institutional sector accounts, incorporating a detailed system of equations. Our model provides a powerful tool for acquiring new insights in fiscal policy analysis, through the assessment of tailored tax reforms, which can consist of either changes in tax rates and tax bases for indirect and direct taxes. Finally, to validate the model we perform an equalizing Value-Added-Tax rates reform. We find that a budget-neutral uniform tax rate reform would be GDP and welfare improving. However, results across agents and sectors vary.     

Optimal Commodity Taxes in Australia

The recent changes to commodity taxes in Australia have led to renewed interest in a classic question in public finance: should the tax rates be uniform or differentiated? This article attempts to answer this question by calculating optimal commodity taxes in Australia for a nine‐item disaggregation. The estimates point to non‐uniform commodity taxes, even from the viewpoint of an inequality‐insensitive tax planner. The optimal commodity taxes bear little resemblance with the pre‐GST or post‐GST tax rates. No less significant is our observation that even the purely efficiency‐driven optimal commodity taxes imply lower real expenditure inequality than the actual taxes.     

Optimal Climate Change Policies When Governments Cannot Commit

We analyse the optimal design of climate change policies when a government wants to encourage the private sector to undertake significant immediate investment in developing cleaner technologies, but the relevant carbon taxes (or other environmental policies) that would incentivise such investment by firms will be set in the future. We assume that the current government cannot commit to long-term carbon taxes, and so both it and the private sector face the possibility that the government in power in the future may give different (relative) weight to environmental damage costs. We show that this lack of commitment has a significant asymmetric effect: it increases the social benefits of the current government to have the investment undertaken, but reduces the private benefit to the private sector to invest. Consequently the current government may need to use additional policy instruments—such as R&D subsidies—to stimulate the required investment.     

改进交易效率的农业生产性服务业发展机理与实证研究

基于劳动分工理论与超边际分析方法,构建改进交易效率的农业生产性服务业发展模型,运用面板数据模型对理论模型进行了实证检验。研究发现:商品市场交易效率、农户数量规模、政府补贴和农户劳动力变化是影响改进交易效率的农业生产性服务业发展的四个因素。其中,商品市场交易效率对改进交易效率的农业生产性服务业发展不具有显著正向影响,农户分布密度、政府补贴和城镇化率提高1%,改进交易效率的农业生产性服务业发展水平分别提高0.135、0.955和2.714。     

Land rents,optimal taxation and local fiscal independence in an economy with local public goods

A general equilibrium model of an economy with cities, farms and free migration of population is constructed. The cities produce internationally traded goods via production functions subject to economies of scale. They also produce housing and a local public good. Two areas are defined to be disjoint if households performing an economic activity in one area are not operating in the other. An area is exclusive if it is disjoint to its complement. The economic surplus of an area is then defined to be the value of the area's net export of goods and resources. Local efficiency of an area is defined to be a state in which its economic surplus attains its maximum value. This state is proved to be a necessary condition for Pareto optimality of the economy. It is then proved that beside Piguvian corrective taxes the only taxes necessary and sufficient to finance local government activities efficiently, are taxes on land rents. Furthermore, if jurisdiction of a local government is over an exclusive area no intervention of central government is necessary, and local authorities can be fully autonomous. If the economy can be divided into pairwise disjointed exclusive areas, those areas are optimal jurisdictions in the sense that efficiency in the economy can be achieved with local authorities only.