Optimal Social Insurance with Linear Income Taxation*

We study optimal social insurance aimed at insuring disability risk in the presence of linear income taxation. Optimal disability insurance benefits rise with previous earnings. Optimal insurance is incomplete even though disability risks are exogenous and verifiable so that moral hazard in disability insurance is absent. Imperfect insurance is optimal because it encourages workers to insure themselves against disability by working and saving more, thereby alleviating the distortionary impact of the redistributive income tax on labor supply and savings.     

Age‐related Optimal Income Taxation*

In most countries, average income varies with age. In this paper we investigate if and how it is possible to enhance the redistributive mechanism by relating tax payments to age. Using an OLG model where some individuals are low skilled all their life while others are low skilled when young but high skilled when old, we first show how an age dependent optimal income tax can Pareto improve upon an age independent income tax. We then characterize the optimal age dependent income tax. A tax on interest income is part of the optimal tax structure.     

Optimal Redistributive Income Taxation and Efficiency Wages*

In this paper, we integrate efficiency wage setting with the theory of optimal redistributive income taxation. In doing so, we use a model with two skill types, where efficiency wage setting characterizes the labor market faced by the low‐skilled, whereas the high‐skilled face a conventional, competitive labor market. We show that the marginal income tax implemented for the high‐skilled is negative under plausible assumptions. The marginal income tax facing the low‐skilled can be either positive or negative, in general. An increase in unemployment benefits contributes to a relaxation of the binding self‐selection constraint, which makes this instrument particularly useful from the perspective of redistribution.     

Redistributive Taxation under Ethical Behaviour*

We consider the implications of ethical behaviour on the effect of a redistributive tax‐transfer system. In choosing their labour supplies, individuals take into account whether their tax liabilities correspond to what they view as ethically acceptable. If tax liabilities are viewed as ethically acceptable, a taxpayer behaves ethically, does not distort her behaviour, and chooses to work as if she were not taxed. On the other hand, if ethical behaviour results in tax liabilities that exceed those that are ethically acceptable, she behaves egoistically (partially or fully), distorts her behaviour, and chooses her labour supply taking into account the income tax. We establish taxpayers' equilibrium behaviour and obtain that labour supply is less elastic when taxpayers may behave ethically than when they act egoistically. We characterise and compare the egoistic voting equilibrium linear tax schedules under potentially ethical and egoistic behaviour. We also compare our results to those obtained under altruism, an alternative benchmark.     

Conspicuous Leisure: Optimal Income Taxation When Both Relative Consumption and Relative Leisure Matter*

In previous studies on public policy under relative‐consumption concerns, leisure comparisons have been ignored. In this paper, we consider a two‐type optimal non‐linear income tax model, in which people care about both their relative consumption and their relative leisure. Increased consumption positionality typically implies higher marginal income tax rates for both ability types, whereas leisure positionality has an offsetting role. However, this offsetting role is not symmetric; concern about relative leisure implies a progressive income tax component (i.e., a component that is larger for the high‐ability type than for the low‐ability type). Leisure positionality does not modify the policy rule for public‐good provision.     

INCOMPLETE FINANCIAL MARKETS,IRREVERSIBILITY OF INVESTMENTS AND FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICY INSTRUMENTS*

In this paper, we analyse the use of fiscal and monetary instruments to improve long‐run welfare when productive investment is irreversible and uncollateralizable and there is no insurance. Only fiat money or government issued bonds provide self‐insurance. We demonstrate that an increase in precautionary savings reduces irreversible productive investment. Hence, subsidies to promote productive but irreversible investment should be financed in such a way that they do not reduce insurance capability. When lump‐sum subsidies are high, a consumption tax is likely to be more redistributive and thus more consumption smoothing than are the other sets of instruments analysed in our model.     

企业家能力、企业家道德风险与经济增长

本文从企业家的角度对我国国有企业效率低下的原因进行了分析：先是构造了一个基于新古典的模型,结果表明企业家能力的提高和企业家道德风险的降低有利于中国的经济增长;接着又构造了一个动态最优化的模型,结果表明,对国有企业的监管有利于中国的经济增长。最后的应用分析表明,国资委的成立可以引致国有企业效率的提高。     

Prospect Theory,Fairness, and the Escalation of Conflict at a Negotiation Impasse*

We study a bilateral negotiation set-up where, at a bargaining impasse, the disadvantaged party chooses whether to escalate the conflict or not. Escalation is costly for both parties, and it results in a random draw of the winner of the escalated conflict. We derive the behavioral predictions of a simple social utility function, which is convex in disadvantageous inequality, thus connecting the inequity aversion and the prospect theory models. Our causal laboratory evidence is, to a large extent, consistent with the predicted effects. Among other things, the model predicts that the escalation rate is higher when escalation outcomes are riskier, and that the disagreement rate is lower when the cost of escalating the conflict is higher.     

Fertility,Taxation and Family Policy*

Historically, there is clear evidence of an inverse relationship between female labour supply and fertility. However, the relationship across countries is now positive. Countries like Germany and Italy, with the lowest fertility, also have the lowest female participation rates. This paper analyses the extent to which this can be explained by public policy, in particular taxation and the system of child support. The results suggest that countries which have individual rather than joint taxation, and which support families through child care facilities rather than child payments, are likely to have both higher female labour supply and higher fertility.     

Export Credit Guarantees, Moral Hazard and Exports Quality

We analyse the role played by export credit guarantees (ECGs) in encouraging exports to developing countries. The existence of moral hazard on the side of the firm is introduced. We show that the inability of the exporter's government to verify the actual quality of the product will limit its ability to encourage trade through ECGs, once the coverage provided goes beyond a certain threshold. This result provides a rationale behind the limited coverage on ECGs.     

Tuition Fees and the Dual Income Tax: The Optimality of the Nordic Income Tax System Reconsidered

Abstract. We examine the optimal tax and education policy in the case of a dual income tax. Incorporating an educational sector and endogenous capital taxation, we show that the results in Nielsen and Sørensen's study are vulnerable with respect to assumptions on the elasticity of unskilled labor supply. Tax progressivity results residually, whereas educational policy guarantees an optimal tax wedge on, but not necessarily efficiency in, educational investment. The less elastic are the unobservable educational investment and skilled labor (the latter relative to unskilled labor supply), and the more educational policy cares about the skilled labor supply, the more progressive the tax system will be. Education will be subsidized on a net basis if the complementarity effect on the skilled labor supply is strong and important; however, there is also an offsetting substitutability effect of the unskilled labor supply at play.     

碳税对经济增长、能源消费与收入分配的影响分析

本文利用1995—2005年我国GDP、能源消费和资源税样本数据,通过构建基于面板数据的计量模型,分析了征收碳税对我国28个省、直辖市和自治区的经济增长、能源消费与收入分配的影响。结果表明:征收碳税能够提高我国大部分地区的经济规模,同时对东部地区的能源消费具有抑制作用,但扩大了大部分地区资本所有者和劳动者的收入分配差距。这说明,现阶段我国应该分地区、分税率进行碳税征收,以使我国大部分地区在保持经济增长和体现社会公平的前提下实现节能减排的目标。     

Capital Income Taxation,Economic Growth and Heterogeneity in the Motivation to Give

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between capital income taxation and economic growth within an overlapping generations model when individuals may bequeath wealth. The altruistic concern is modeled as a synthesis of joy‐of‐giving and family altruism so that individuals may derive utility from the amount of bequest itself and by providing children with a disposable income later on in life. Using this framework, it is shown that, in contrast to the existing literature, increasing the capital income tax rate may well enhance growth under operative bequests.     

道德风险、沉淀成本效应与软预算约束

作者从事后信息不对称--道德风险角度,借助于沉淀成本效应再次解释政府对大型国有企业软预算约束行为,从而扩展了公有产权结构、动态承诺不一致,以及政策性负担等经济解释,进一步认识到解决软预算约束根本在于消除沉淀成本效应,而克服委托代理情况下的道德风险行为是最为根本的,因而设计恰当的制度安排显得十分重要.     

Globalization and taxation: Theory and evidence

We construct a theoretical model to capture the compensation and efficiency effects of globalization in a set up where the redistributive tax rate is chosen by the median voter. The model predicts that the two alternative modes of globalization- trade liberalization and financial openness- could potentially have different effects on taxation. We then provide some empirical evidence on the relationship between taxation and the alternative modes of globalization using a large cross-country panel data set. On average, globalization is associated with lower taxation but there is some evidence that in countries with high capital-labor ratio, globalization is associated with increased taxation. We make a distinction between de jure and de facto measures of globalization and find a strong negative relationship between taxation and de jure measures of globalization. The results for de facto measures of globalization are mixed.     

Labor Income Taxation,Human Capital,and Growth: The Role of Childcare*

In this paper, we examine the effects of labor income taxation on growth in an overlapping generations model in which schooling and childcare play a role in the production of human capital. We compare such effects with those obtained in a model in which only schooling matters for skill formation. We show that the omission of childcare from the technology of skill formation can bias the results related to the impact of labor income taxation on growth.     

Double Moral Hazard,Monitoring, and the Nature of Contracts

generalized double-sided moral-hazard model, with risk-averse parties who mutually monitor each other (to get a reasonable idea of outcome/effort). The model considers trade-off between monitoring costs and moral hazard costs, which are endogenously determined by the extent of monitoring. Using this model, we formally prove a generalized version of Coase's conjecture – that the optimal contract minimizes the agency and risk costs. We then show how varying assumptions about the feasibility or cost of monitoring of the outcome or the worker's effort lead to different contracts being optimal. The analysis is then used to explain the nature of contracts observed in practice under many different situations. We will give an explanation as to why industrial workers typically work under wage contracts, while share contracts are common in agriculture and will explain why profit sharing is more common for senior managers than for the production workers. Received September 19, 2000; revised version received October 30, 1997     

Collective Organizations versus Relative Performance Contracts: Inequality, Risk Sharing, and Moral Hazard

This paper studies collective economic organizations that share risk and mitigate moral hazard and compares them with relative performance contracts. Information-constrained optimal distributions of organizations and contracts are shown to be functions of the underlying primitives, in particular, the distribution of Pareto weights, and hence degree of inequality. Internal inequality of a potential, local group is a force for collective organization. That is, multi-agent organizations exist in order to extract wealth from some but not necessarily all members. The group organization is also shown to be information-constrained Pareto optimal at extremes of local wealth relative to an outsider. But the group organization is susceptible to both agents simultaneously deviating, colluding against the outsider, and this distortion makes an individualistic, relative performance contract an attractive alternative. More generally, organizations, contracts, and allocations are jointly determined. These implications could be distinguished in cross-sectional, time series data. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D70, D82.     

Optimal nonlinear taxation of income and savings without commitment

When a government is unable to commit to its future tax policies, information about taxpayers' characteristics revealed by their behavior may be used to extract more taxes from them in the future. We examine the implications of this ratchet effect for the design of redistributive income and savings tax policies in a two‐period model with two types of individuals who only differ in their skill levels. When commitment is not possible, it may be optimal to separate, pool, or partially pool different types in period one. The nature of the distortions to labor supplies and savings are investigated for each of these three regimes. The identification of the optimal regime is investigated numerically.     

You Don't Always Get What You Pay For: Bonuses,Perceived Income and Effort

Abstract. Consider a principal–agent relationship in which more effort by the agent raises the likelihood of success. This paper provides conditions such that no success bonus induces the agent to exert more effort and the optimal contract is independent of success. Moreover, success bonuses may even reduce effort and thus the probability of success. The reason is that bonuses increase the perceived income of the agent and can hence reduce his willingness to exert effort. This perceived income effect has to be weighed against the incentive effect of the bonus. The tradeoff is determined by the marginal effect of effort on the success probability in relation to this probability itself (success hazard‐rate of effort). The paper also discusses practical implications of the finding.