estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution using mortgage notches using a novel source of quasi experimental variation in interest rates we develop a new approach to estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution eis in the u k the mortgage interest rate features discrete jumps notches at thresholds for the loan to value ltv ratio these notches generate large bunching below the critical ltv thresholds and missing mass above them we develop a dynamic model that links these empirical moments to the underlying structural eis the average eis is small around 0 1 and quite homogeneous in the population this finding is robust to structural assumptions and can allow for uncertainty a wide range of risk preferences portfolio reallocation liquidity constraints present bias and optimization frictions our findings have implications for the numerous calibration studies that rely on larger values of the eis

social security liquidity constraints and pre retirement consumption one of the primary goals of the social security retirement program is the maintenance of consumption in old age in the past decade since the pioneering paper by feldstein 13 studies have examined the impact of the system on consumption over the entire life cycle and not just in old age empirical work has tested the impact on consumption of the individual wealth transfers accompanying the introduction of a pay as you go social security system extending this discussion of the impact of social security on pre retirement consumption hubbard 21 has shown in the context of lifetime uncertainty that even an actuarially fair fully funded social security system can raise lifetime consumption hence previous partial equilibrium estimates of the impact of social security on consumption drawn solely from consideration of the intergenerational wealth transfer at the introduction of the system are underestimates of the potential effect 2 an important assumption in the approaches cited above is that of perfect capital markets i e that individuals can borrow against prospective gains from participating in the social security system such an assumption is at variance with actual limitations on borrowing e g upward sloping interest rate schedules collateral requirements and quantity restrictions hayashi 18 found that approximately twenty percent of all consumption in the u s is accounted for by liquidity constrained consumers 3 flavin 16 found that the estimate of the marginal propensity to consume is affected dramatically by the inclusion of proxies for liquidity constraints suggesting that liquidity constraints are an important part of the observed excess sensitivity of consumption to current income since its inception in 1935 old age and survivors insurance oasi provided

stochastic equilibria existence spanning number and the no expected financial gain from trade hypothesis stochastic equilibria under uncertainty with continuous time security trading and consumption are demonstrated in a general setting a common question is whether the current price of a security is an unbiased predictor of the future price of the security plus intermediate dividends this is the hypothesis of no expected financial gains from trade the relevance of this hypothesis in multi good economies is called into question by the following demonstrated fact for each set of probability assessments there exists a corresponding equilibrium one with the original agents original equilibrium allocations and no expected financial gains from trade under the given probability assessments the spanning number of the economy is defined as the fewest number of security markets required to sustain a complete markets equilibrium in a dynamic sense made precise in the paper the spanning number is linked directly to agent primitives in particular the manner in which new information resolves uncertainty over time the spanning number is shown to be invariant under bounded changes in expectations several examples are given in which the spanning number is finite even though the number of potential states of the world is infinite

unknown wage offer distribution and job search duration abstract if job searchers do not know the wage offer distribution they are facing they might take the wage structure in their last firm as a prior doing so reservation wages will be biased which will also bias unemployment duration using data for austrian workers it is shown that workers seem to have good knowledge of expected mean wages but less so for higher moments of the wage offer distribution

a respecified tax adjusted fisher relation how much will a 1 increase in expected inflation increase nominal interest rates irving fisher s famous equation implies that nominal interest rates will rise in proportion to an increase in expected inflation darby and feldstein correcting the fisher equation for taxation predict a nominal interest rate increase of 1 1 t where t is the marginal tax rate i e if t 3 then a 1 increase in expected inflation should cause a 1 4 rise in interest rates empirical evidence however suggests that the rise in interest rates is much smaller than the darby feldstein prediction estimates are around 9 varying mostly between 5 and 1 15 which is much closer to fisher s original prediction it is important to know the size of the interest rate response to inflation expectations in a world in which inflation and interest rates are volatile and in which tax laws are designed to influence savings and investment through interest rates in this paper we attempt to close the gap between theorized and estimated effects of inflation by incorporating into the fisher equation two important aspects of the u s tax code historic cost depreciation and the lower tax rate on capital gains our model shows that the effect of expected inflation on interest rates is dampened by the lower benefits from depreciation deductions arid the capital gains tax our corrected fisher equation predicts a 1 12 nominal interest rate increase rather than the 1 4 increase implied by the darby feldstein model the our model closes about 56 of the gap between theory and empirical evidence the remainder could be closed by additional refinements in the model or better empirical modeling

cyclical and political influences on the size distribution of income in the us 1959 1989 the quesion of whether the size distribution of income is subject to cyclical fluctuations in unemployment and inflation has been investigated in several studies in these studies however the fact that unemployment inflation and distribution may be influenced intentionally by policy makers is ignored in order to investigate whether any political influence on the size distribution of income actually exists a model is formulated in which the distribution not only depends on unemployment and inflation but also on a variable representing the political process the model is tested using time series data pertaining to the case of the us in the period 1958 to 1989 the results indicate that inequality tends to be negatively influenced by democratic administrations

do tax incentives for saving in pension accounts cause debt accumulation evidence from danish register data abstract this paper applies a quasi experimental research design on a danish 2010 policy that reduced tax incentives for saving in annuity pension schemes to show significant substitution of savings from retirement accounts to gross debt repayments we find that for every 1 danish currency unit reduction in retirement savings 31 cents goes to debt repayments taking into account all types of savings we find full crowding out consistent with previous findings we document that the effect is driven by a minority about 23 percent who actively rebalance their savings

a general equilibrium model of portfolio insurance this article examines the effects of portfolio insurance on market and asset price dynamics in a general equilibrium continuous time model portfolio insurers are modeled as expected utility maximizing agents martingale methods are employed in solving the individual agents dynamic consumption portfolio problems comparisons are made between the optimal consumption processes optimally invested wealth and portfolio strategies of the portfolio insurers and normal agents at a general equilibrium level comparisons across economies reveal that the market volatility and risk premium are decreased and the asset and market price levels increased by the presence of portfolio insurance article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

fiscal redistribution and income inequality in latin america income inequality in latin america ranks among the highest in the world it can be traced back to the unequal distribution of assets especially land and education in the region but the extent to which asset inequality translates into income inequality depends on the redistributive capacity of the state this paper documents the performance of latin american fiscal systems from the perspective of income redistribution using newly available information on the incidence of taxes and transfers across the region the findings indicate that i the differences in income inequality before taxes and transfers between latin america and western europe are much more modest than those after taxes and transfers ii the key reason is that in contrast with industrial countries in most latin american countries the fiscal system is of little help in reducing income inequality and iii in countries where fiscal redistribution is significant it is achieved mostly through transfers rather than taxes these facts stress the need for fiscal reforms across the region to further the goal of social equity however different countries need to place different relative emphasis on raising tax collection restructuring the tax system and improving the targeting of expenditures

on viable diffusion price processes of the market portfolio the assumption that the market portfolio follows a specified diffusion process implies in a simple equilibrium framework that the representative individual must have a certain utility function which is identified in the paper not every diffusion process is viable i e can be endogenized to be the market portfolio s price process in such an equilibrium model the paper provides necessary and sufficient conditions for viability which imply that viable diffusion processes constitute a rather restricted family it is common in financial economics especially in the option pricing literature to take a certain price dynamics of an underlying asset as a primitive assumption the results are then seemingly preference free but it is known that if one wishes to embed such a partial equilibrium model in a general equilibrium framework this can be obtained only with certain individuals preferences for example the black scholes 1973 model in which the underlying asset follows a geometric brownian motion is known to be consistent with utility functions which exhibit constant proportional risk aversion cpra see rubinstein 1976 breeden and litzenberger 1978 brennan 1979 stapleton and subrahmanyam 1984 and bick 1987 by this we mean that if the market portfolio follows a geometric brownian motion then necessarily the utility function of the representative individual exhibits cpra conversely one can construct a simple economy with a stock and a riskless bond where identical individuals have cpra type utility functions and where the endogenous stock price enumerated by the bond follows a prespecified geometric brownian motion however the utility function which corresponds in equilibrium to a general diffusion process has never been identified this was the initial motivation for this paper the problem loosely stated is as follows suppose we are told that in a simple equilibrium model as above the market portfolio follows a given diffusion process what does it imply regarding individuals preferences it is clear that the problem is not well formulated if a dividend process is also postulated e g as in merton 1973 1977 in this case consistency with two processes the price process and the dividend process is to be required this

the transition from payroll to consumption receipts with endogenous human capital abstract the transition from payroll to consumption receipts is simulated in a life cycle growth model featuring adult human capital as in other studies savings are higher under the consumption base however unlike those studies much of the additional savings here take human form human capital production increases for all cohorts in or yet to join the labor market as of the tax change the additional human capital production tends to dampen physical capital accumulation when compared with otherwise identical simulations which hold human capital constant the implications for intergenerational incidence are similar to that found in other examinations of the transition to a consumption base

welfare effects of capital income taxation under variable and fixed labor supply not every model of economic behavior can allow for variable labor supply when attention is focused on other economic issues the effect on welfare change measurement of assuming labor to be in fixed supply becomes important the traditional view is that allowing labor supply to be variable will reduce the measured benefits of replacing an interest income tax with a payroll or consumption tax owing to the introduction or increase in a static distortion between consumption and leisure however this view ignores two mechanisms by which variable labor supply may actually increase the benefits of relaxing the capital income tax first an interest income tax distorts the intertemporal path of leisure and thus of labor supply second as explained below the interest elasticity of savings may be augmented by changes in the intertemporal labor supply path eliminating the labor supply path distortion and increasing capital accumulation can provide benefits which may potentially exceed the disadvantages of increased static distortion this paper tests which effects dominate by simulation in a life cycle growth model previous papers have not addressed these issues feldstein 3 discusses welfare measurement in a two period model in which an individual supplies labor in the first period and consumes in both periods feldstein s partial equilibrium efficiency measure incorporates the elasticity of labor supply with respect to the interest rate but his single period of labor supply may be misleading summers 8 demonstrates that in multi period models interest rate changes may have a large effect upon the present value of lifetime resources human wealth and consequently consumption that finding when applied to frameworks allowing for leisure consumption implies that both the compensated and uncompensated elasticities of labor supply with respect to the interest rate may be markedly different for multi period than for one period labor supply models summers exploits a multi period life cycle growth model to measure numerically the steady state efficiency gains following an elimination of interest income taxation he assumes labor to be fixed in supply at each moment consequently changes in human wealth cannot affect the leisure profile and the benefits of eliminating intertemporal leisure distortions are not captured summers concludes that steady state consumption and welfare would increase

do rising tides lift all boats the impact of secular and cyclical changes on poverty discussions about the antipoverty effects of economic growth in the united states have largely been predicated on john kennedy s metaphor that a rising tide lifts all boats but the magnitude of these effects has been a subject of debate since the inception of the war on poverty see lowell gallaway 1965 and henry aaron 1967 this debate has public policy as well as academic implications the greater the antipoverty effectiveness of growth the less the need for special programs or income supplements during economic expansions elsewhere we have shown that increased real income need not be associated with a decline in poverty see our 1984 and 1985 papers in fact poverty rates did not fall from 1982 to 1983 even though real median income increased and in 1984 the official poverty rate was about the same as it was in 1967 while real median family income was 7 1 percent above its 1967 level if a rising tide was lifting all boats the tide was late in many harbors in this paper we examine the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and poverty section i argues that several factors now limit the effectiveness of growth in reducing poverty section ii differentiates the effects of secular economic growth from those of cyclical recoveries the next section presents our interpretation of the data followed by a brief conclusion we show that growth had a large antipoverty effect through the early 1970 s but that the more recent experience has been different because growth rates have slowed and inequality has increased

a simulation study of the interactive effects of taxes and inflation on the relative price of land recent experience in the united states with high and variable inflation has led to an outpouring of research concerning inflation s impact on the relative prices of real and financial assets with the exception of three recent papers feldstein 1980a rose 1986a alston 1986 the impact of inflation on the relative price of land has been neglected land is usually eliminated from economic models of the tax system so that the effects of inflation s complex interaction with the income tax system on firm financing and valuation of capital can be highlighted in this paper we take the opposite approach the effects of inflation on corporate financing of capital are suppressed by allowing only bond financing in order to highlight the effects of inflation and tax rate changes on the relative price of land

synthesizing the malthusian and senian approaches on scarcity a realist account food entitlement decline fed and food availability decline fad are two approaches to explaining famines that have different policy implications one focuses on the systemic level whereas the other is concerned with the individual level they therefore analyse relatively distinct causal mechanisms thus an important question is whether these approaches can be reconciled another related question is how fad and fed based explanations relate to classical malthusian views about rapid food requirement increase fri this paper analyses these questions and argues that these three approaches can indeed be reconciled within a single framework by outlining the causal sources of fad fed and fri this task requires among other things the separation of ontological categories and empirical measures as a consequence of this argument the paper suggests that there are only seven possible ontological combinations of how a famine situation can arise as a direct cause simultaneously it maintains that there are virtually an infinite number of ways in which these combinations may act as indirect causes rooted in economic political and social conditions the analysis is exemplified by the bengal famine of 1943 because that famine is a well known case the wider research and policy applicability of this general account are discussed but have yet to be tested in relation to other scarcity cases water land fish this synthesis is made possible by the incorporation of critical realist interventions into economic theory

dynamic equilibrium with liquidity constraints this article studies an intertemporal economy with liquidity constrained and unconstrained individuals we use a stopping time approach to solve the finite horizonconstrained consumption portfolio problem with constant relative risk aversion and to examine the structure of equilibrium the impact of the constraint on the optimal consumption and the financing portfolio is assessed the equilibrium state price density is related to the exercise boundary of an american style contingent claim with nonlinear payoff this stopping time characterization enables us to prove the existence of an equilibrium and can be implemented numerically properties of equilibrium bond and stock returns are examined copyright 2003 oxford university press

the later you pay the higher the k this paper shows the importance of the age path life cycle timing of any tax for the accumulation of capital in the economy income consumption and wage taxes differ in their age paths as well as their incentive effects this paper studies how the differing age path of each tax affects the capital accumulation of the economy in an empirically calibrated life cycle model we investigate lump sum age taxes and find in every case that the later the person pays tax the higher the k of the economy to analyze the life cycle timing effect of conventional transactions based taxes income consumption and wage we replace each tax with a lump sum age tax that has the identical age path of tax payments over the life cycle we find that the timing effect is quantitatively important and often causes the impact of a tax on capital accumulation to be very different from what would be predicted from the incentive effect

tax policy the interest elasticity of saving and capital accumulation numerical analysis of theoretical models increasing disillusionment with traditional empirical methods is having a major impact on research methodology which is increasingly turning to simulation analysis based on theoretical models and assumed parameter values in research on saving and wealth accumulation there have been several recent studies consisting of simulation of theoretical models based on the life cycle model a particular focus has been tax policy and capital formation which is the area of concentration of this paper the aim is to analyze in a theoretical simulation context the impact on saving and wealth of an increase in the after tax rate of return to saving generated by a cut in the tax rate on income from capital this paper suggests that such simulation analysis while instructive as to the behavior of the class of models examined and as to the critical channels of influence does not yield a theoretical presumption in favor of cutting taxes on income from capital as a means of stimulating capital formation the development of this literature derives in part from disillusionment with traditional empirical methods many such papers begin by listing a litany of the problems involved in the usual type of empirical analysis before proceeding to simulation of theoretical structures the implicit conclusion at times appears to be that because of the daunting problems of standard empirical methodology the results derived from it can be ignored and that empirical magnitudes can perhaps be discovered by deductive means the temptation to think of the precise numerical results derived from theoretical simulation as empirical can be rather strong it needs to be reemphasized that empirical magnitudes can only be determined by empirical studies in section i the theoretical structure of a zero bequest life cycle model2 is outlined and several numerical simulations of this model are presented these simulations highlight interesting and nontrivial interactions of theoretical parameters and also demonstrate the difficulty involved in attempts to develop robust aggregate implications from such a framework for instance it is argued that summers claim to have developed a prima facie theoretical case for a high interest elasticity of savings 1981a p 537 does not stand up to sensitivity analysis a small change in the assumed rate of pure time preference or in other parametric assumptions generate otherwise plausible cases in which the interest elasticity of aggregate saving is low the experiments conducted in section i are partial equilibrium in the sense that the interest rate is changed exogenously which changes savings and hence the capital stock but the feedback effect of the capital international monetary fund this paper derives from chs 2 and 3 of my doctoral dissertation completed during a research fellowship at the brookings institution financial support was received from brookings and the social science research council i am grateful to henry aaron barry bosworth maxim engers irwin friend laurence kotlikoff franco modigliani joseph pechman duncan ripley robert shiller patricia stack and my supervisor albert ando for comments and guidance on earlier drafts none of the above institutions or individuals is responsible for the views expressed or any remaining errors for example see james tobin and walter dolde betsy white lawrence summers 1978 1981a b g moore alan auerbach and laurence kotlikoff and auerbach kotlikoff and j skinner 2it is popular to establish a sharp dichotomy between life cycle models and bequest models this taxonomy ignores the frequent references to the potential significance of bequests in the writings of the originators of the life cycle hypothesis a distinction between zero bequest life cycle models and life cycle models incorporating bequests is more accurate in terms of doctrinal history see for example albert ando and franco modigliani and modigliani and richard brumberg

fiscal incidence in an overlapping generations model with a fixed asset abstract we analyze a model of overlapping generations with a fixed factor land malleable capital and labor we consider the dynamic effects of various fiscal policies including taxes on rent wages and creation of public debt on capital accumulation land prices and intergenerational welfare minimal assumptions uniqueness and stability imply that a land tax may initially raise land values but the upper bound is less than one half of the tax revenues assuming homothetic utility the ratio between the long run capital responses to a land tax and to a lump sum transfer of equivalent revenue from the young to the old depends solely on the share of labor

price changes supply elasticities industry organization and dairy output distribution long run price elasticities of milk supply are decomposed into price elasticities of yield herd size and farm population for northeastern u s dairy farms these elasticities are shown to vary with farm size because of size related differences in capital intensity specialization yield and herd size variability and rates of entry exit into dairy in the short run price responsiveness is shown to decrease with farm size in the long run large farms are shown to be most price responsive results suggest that lower milk prices could make revenue distribution less equal in both the short and long run by altering output and population distributions

marginal cost of public funds for different tax instruments and government expenditures the marginal cost of public funds that is the size of the direct and indirect excess burden costs for marginal tax revenues is examined in this paper for an open economy with a savings response and using swedish 1979 data the marginal cost of public funds spent on transfer payments is estimated to vary from 1 47 for a distributionally neutral tax on labor and capital to 7 20 for a more progressive tax where average and marginal labor taxes increase by the same rates for changes in the most important tax instrument the marginal cost of public funds varies from 0 98 for expenditures on infrastructure to 2 27 for transfer payments

how income transfer programs affect work savings and the income distribution a critical review for helpful comments on earlier drafts we thank without implicating moses abramovitz yves balcer john bishop alan blinder richard burkhauser michael darby irwin garfinkel alan gustman daniel hamermesh martin holmer george jakubson robert lampman paul menchik robert moffitt michael murray joseph quinn timothy smeeding eugene smolensky barbara wolfe and two anonymous referees

the after tax rate of return affects private savings level of savings and the rate of capital formation are of central concern to both economists and policymakers although the welfare effects of tax reforms do not directly depend on their impact on savings the effects of taxes on savings is crucial to considerations of tax incidence and equity and to the issue of long run growth the impact of the rate of return on consumption and savings decisions also bears on questions regarding the appropriate government discount rate the short run crowding out effects of fiscal policy and the effects of public indebtedness on capital intensity the traditional view among economists is that changes in the rate of return are likely to have only a small effect on the savings rate this consensus is supported by theoretical arguments pointing to the opposing income and substitution effects associated with changes in the rate of return the ambiguous implications of theory are matched by empirical studies which yield conflicting estimates as to the size of the impact of changes in the rate of return the polar empirical estimate is michael boskin s 1978 suggestion that the interest elasticity of savings is 4 this estimate is widely regarded as too high

comparing the distribution of top incomes across countries comparing the distribution of top incomes across countries raises many methodological problems including differences in tax legislation and in tax avoidance the definition of the income unit and the definition of a control total for income the paper considers the significance of these problems in three applications comparing top income shares at a point in time analysing the extent of convergence or divergence over time and setting national changes in the context of the world distribution of income jel d31

tax reform and intergeneration incidence abstract this paper presents a simple analytical framework for understanding intergeneration incidence from tax reform along the transitional growth path of life cycle economies by analyzing the incentive effects of taxes previous studies may give the impression that the impact on intergeneration incidence of converting an income tax to either a consumption or wage tax depends solely on the difference in such incentive effects within the framework of lump sum taxation this paper theoretically investigates under what circumstances the tax postponement effect would be relevant and how the timing of tax payments would affect intergeneration incidence

financial development international capital flows and aggregate output abstract we develop a tractable two country overlapping generations model and show that cross country differences in financial development can explain three recent empirical patterns of international capital flows financial capital flows from relatively poor to relatively rich countries while foreign direct investment flows in the opposite direction net capital flows go from poor to rich countries despite its negative net international investment positions the united states receives a positive net investment income international capital mobility affects output in each country directly through the size of domestic investment and indirectly through the aggregate saving rate under certain conditions the indirect effect may dominate the direct effect so that international capital mobility raises output in the poor country and globally although net capital flows are in the direction to the rich country we also explore the welfare and distributional effects of international capital flows and show that the patterns of capital flows may reverse along the convergence process of a developing country our model adds to the understanding of the costs and the benefits of international capital mobility in the presence of domestic financial frictions

the future of the income tax the federal income tax has been under attack by the economics profession for more than a decade the attack comes from two directions supply siders who believe that progressive income taxation impairs economic incentives and more traditional economists who would substitute a progressive expenditure tax for the income tax 2 at one time support for the expenditure tax was confined to a few members of our profession including such distinguished names as john stuart mill irving fisher nicholas kaldor and james meade today it is fair to say that many if not most economists favor the expenditure tax or a flat rate income tax this group has joined the opponents of progressive taxation in the attack on the income tax despite an incessant barrage from both groups no country in the world is planning to abandon the income tax or is even considering a personal expenditure tax a wave of tax reform beginning with the u s reform in 1986 has been sweeping the world aimed at improving the income tax not at eliminating it tax preferences formerly regarded as sacrosanct are being removed and there is a distinct movement toward comprehensive income taxation 3 however individual income tax rates are being cut tax progressivity has been declining almost everywhere and reliance on the income tax has been diminishing it will come as no surprise to this audience that i approve of the base broadening feature of the current tax reform movement but i believe that the reduction in the redistributive effect of the income tax has gone too far in this paper i shall show that the progressivity of the u s tax system never very pronounced except during and immediately after the two world wars has been declining for more than two decades and that the tax reform act of 1986 reversed this decline but only slightly consequently we have a long way to go to improve the equity of the tax system i believe this can be done without punitive tax rates that will hurt economic incentives i begin with a brief review of recent changes in the u s distribution of income and follow this with an analysis of the effect of taxes on the income distribution i next examine arguments for and against the income tax with particular emphasis on its effects on economic incentives and its merits when compared with the expenditure tax i then evaluate the income tax as it emerged from the 1986 tax reform and conclude with tjoseph pechman passed away on august 19 1989 his presidential address was delivered at the onehundred second meeting of the american economic association december 29 1989 atlanta georgia joseph a pechman economic studies program the brookings institution 1775 massachusetts avenue nw washington dc 20036 i have benefited from the comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper by henry j aaron richard goode jane g gravelle robert w hartman donald w kiefer herbert e klarman robert d reischauer clifford m winston and h peyton young but they should not be held responsible for the views expressed in this paper i am indebted to richard kasten for various simulations i am also grateful to stephen j kastenberg for research assistance and to diane a shugart valerie m owens and sara c hufham for secretarial assistance some of the more extreme supply siders argued that large tax cuts pay for themselves see for example laffer 1981 but i believe it is fair to say that this view has been totally discredited for a more reasonable supply side view see the economic report of the president 1982 2see for example michael j boskin 1978 david e bradford 1980 charles l ballard don fullerton john shoven and john whalley 1985 paul courant and edward gramlich 1982 martin feldstein 1978 robert hall and alvin rabushka 1985 john kay and mervyn king 1983 charles mclure 1987 mieszkowski 1980 and lawrence summers 1981 it is interesting that the recent popularity of the expenditure tax among economists was stimulated by a tax lawyer william d andrews 1974 3see pechman 1988

inference tests for gini based tax progressivity indexes distribution free statistical inference procedures for changes in lorenz and gini based indexes of tax progressivity are developed and applied related but distinct tests for the reynolds smolensky index of residual progression and the kakwani index of liability progression are provided the inference procedures are illustrated by applying them to luxembourg income study microdata for sweden the united kingdom and the united states before and after periods of tax reform in each country a finding of significant change depends on the choice among progressivity indexes no single index exhibits a consistent pattern of significant change in all countries across time

existence of arrow radner equilibrium with endogenously complete markets under incomplete information abstract a stochastic pure exchange economy with incomplete information is studied where one risky asset and a locally riskless bond are traded the underlying risks are described by a k dimensional brownian motion with k 2 the brownian motion is not directly observable agents observe only asset prices and dividends existence of an arrow radner equilibrium is established in such an equilibrium asset prices result such that every informationally feasible consumption plan can be financed by trading in the risky asset and the bond in this sense the resulting asset market is complete journal of economic literature classification numbers g12 g14 d51

is college financial aid equitable and efficient nk reed based financial aid is often defended both on grounds of equity and efficiency equity because it provides equality of opportunity and efficiency because it encourages the formation of productive human capital james 1988 however need is now determined in a way that is both inequitable and inefficient an informal survey of my colleagues who do not study financial aid revealed no one who named the financial aid system as a substantial tax on savings however once this interpretation was suggested they quickly revealed their unanimous and disturbing impression that savings are summarily confiscated from parents upon their first child s matriculation at university though exaggerated this impression is not without foundation two families with identical earnings paths pay dramatically different amounts for college if one saves more than the other thus while the financial aid system may contribute to vertical equity since the poor get more aid than the rich its horizontal inequities are substantial moreover the federal rules for financial aid raise significant efficiency concerns 1 they might conceivably distort many household decisions including family size and the spacing of children however this paper will focus upon the most important incentive distorted by present policies the incentive to save because saving leads to receiving less financial aid a family s return to saving is substantially below the social return this may lead to families making inefficient intertemporal choices and correspondingly to an inefficient loss of capital formation

sample audit tax assessment for businesses what s fair how should a revenue agency assess a business taxpayer s income on the basis of a sample audit of transactions the agency would like to maximize revenue while minimizing the risk that the taxpayer will be assessed more than he really owes the taxpayer reasons that overassessment is worse than underassessment as far as he is concerned and therefore the taxpayer might reasonably argue that the lower bound of a one sided confidence interval should be used by the assessor the revenue agency might understandably take a different point of view the revenue agency might argue that overassessment is really no worse than underassessment from its point of view so the midpoint of such a confidence interval should be used in fact it is this latter position that is currently in use most commonly by state agencies but such practice is being challenged the courts will have to make a decision

rational asset pricing bubbles and portfolio constraints this article shows that portfolio constraints can give rise to rational asset pricing bubbles in equilibrium even if there are unconstrained agents in the economy who can benefit from the induced limited arbitrage opportunities furthermore it is shown that bubbles can lead to both multiplicity and real indeterminacy of equilibria the general results are illustrated by two explicitly solved examples where seemingly innocuous portfolio constraints make bubbles a necessary condition for the existence of an equilibrium c 2012 elsevier inc all rights reserved

levels and long term trends in earnings inequality overcoming current population survey censoring problems using the gb2 distribution over its history the march current population survey cps has increasingly captured the upper tail of the distribution of all sources of income this together with time consistency problems in top coding means that users of both the public use and restricted access cps will understate the level of wage earnings and income inequality in earlier years and overstate their growth over time we address this problem by modeling the personal earnings of full time full year workers using the generalized beta distribution of the second kind calculating gini coefficients from the estimated parameters and comparing them with past findings

capital income taxation in a two commodity life cycle model the role of factor intensity and asset capitalization effects this paper discusses the impact of changes in capital income taxation in a two commodity life cycle general equilibrium growth model in contrast to the solow swan one commodity framework which has been used in previous life cycle policy simulation summers 1981 auerbach et al 1983 auerbath and kotlikoff 1983 1987 we use a two commodity uzawa 1961 1963 type model consumption and capital goods are separately identitied with an endogenously determined relative price between them as a result both asset capitalization effects changes in the relative price of capital and consumption goods and factor intensity effects across sectors are captured calculations with the model suggest that both of these effects

on equilibrium asset price processes in this article we derive necessary and sufficient conditions that must be satisfied by equilibrium asset price processes in apure exchange economy we examine a world in which asset prices follow a diffusion process asset markets are dynamically complete all investors maximize their state independent expected utility of consumption at some future date and investors have nonrandom exogenous income we show that it is necessary and suffcient that the coefficients of an equilibrium diffusion price process satisfy a partial differential equation and a boundary condition we also examine how the dynamics of asset prices are related to the shape of the representative investor s utility function through the boundary condition for example in a constant volatility economy the expected instantaneous return of the market portfolio is mean reverting if and only if the relative risk aversion of the representative investor is decreasing in terminal wealth

compensation and political feasibility facilitating welfare improving coalitions there is a broad consensus among economists policymakers and informed citizens that free market economies do not preclude many inefficiencies in resource allocation there are many circumstances where policy interventions have the potential to achieve a pareto improvement in the sense of making some people better off without making others worse off the challenge to any particular market oriented society is to design those mechanisms organizations and institutions that identify the limitations of free markets and result in those reforms that seek pareto improved outcomes

tax reform 1986 and marginal welfare changes for labor during the 1980s in the united states before tax income shifted away from the poor and toward the upper income groups changing the distribution of tax burdens or after tax income is one way to redress a growing imbalance in before tax income pechman 14 feldstein 6 and wallace et al 17 have all shown that the tax reform act of 1986 tra86 increased the progressivity of the combined personal and corporate income taxes an achievement not accomplished in the last two decades of income tax reform 14 tax reform can also increase or decrease the welfare of individuals in an economy through its effect on the allocation of labor supply resources tra86 reduced the highest marginal income tax rates from 50 percent to 28 percent for high income persons and removed some lower income persons from the tax roles such large marginal tax rate changes introduce significant potential for increased economic efficiency in labor supply and for welfare gains for the rich and poor alike these changes should be part of the benefit analysis of tax reform indeed hausman and poterba 10 report welfare cost changes that result from tra86 for the average male and female their estimates however do not account for welfare cost changes throughout the income distribution in addition to our use of microdata to estimate the marginal welfare cost of tax reform we use more precise measures of marginal tax rates than other researchers in this paper we use browning s partial equilibrium framework to examine the influence of the reduction in marginal tax rates from tra86 on the distribution of welfare gains from labor supply reallocation for males by population decile and for females by population decile and by marital status the empirical results illustrate how the tax reform affected low income female household heads where poverty is so heavily concentrated as well as other household heads and spouses the results indicate that tra86 reduced welfare costs in the economy but these welfare

the integrability problem of asset prices abstract in a dynamic continuous time stochastic environment given a well behaved asset price a non decreasing and concave utility function that reproduces the asset price in the rational expectations equilibrium can be identified journal of economic literature classification numbers d11 g12 c60 d50 d80

the role of intergenerational transfers in aggregate capital accumulation this paper uses historical u s data to directly estimate the contribution of intergenerational transfers to aggregate capital accumulation the evidence presented indicates that intergenerational transfers account for the vast majority of aggregate u s capital formation only a negligible fraction of actual capital accumulation can be traced to life cycle or hump savings a major difference between this study and previous investigations of this issue is the use of more accurate longitudinal age earnings and age consumption profiles these profiles are simply too flat to generate substantial life cycle savings this paper suggests the importance of and need for substantially greater research and data collection on intergenerational transfers life cycle models of savings that emphasize savings for retirement as the dominant form of capital accumulation should give way to models that illuminate the determinants of intergenerational transfers

equity effects of the tax reform act of 1986 the major goals of the tax reform act of 1986 included an increase in the equity of the tax system but equity is a concept that is difficult to evaluate one dimension of equity involves vertical equity the idea that people of different income should be treated differently by the tax code this notion is often closely linked with the idea that the tax code should be at least somewhat progressive the tax reform act has also been characterized as favoring lower income individuals relative to higher income ones six million lowincome families were removed from the tax roles through increased standard deductions and personal exemptions and the earned income tax credit which refunded taxes to low income workers was expanded a second dimension of equity is horizontal equity the attempt to be sure that individuals with equal incomes are treated equally the tax reform act took many steps toward equalizing the treatment of different types of income it converted the personal tax rate schedule into two rates eliminated longstanding tax benefits such as the investment tax credit and the capital gains exclusion curtailed recently enacted incentives such as accelerated depreciation and individual retirement accounts struck deeply at popular tax shelters cut the top marginal tax rate for individuals by over one third and reduced the corporate tax rate by over one quarter but although efficiency gains have been

a critical realist interpretation of evolutionary growth theorising the article discusses a critical realist interpretation of evolutionary growth theorising by focusing on some of its basic characteristics the evolutionary ontology is complex differentiated structured systemic open ever changing and radically uncertain its methodology tends to be increasingly based on appreciative theorising retroductive explanations and interdisciplinary analysis after discussing these features the article suggests that critical realism may indeed constitute an important philosophical and methodological foundation for the future development of evolutionary theories of economic growth

interest elasticity in a life cycle model with precautionary savings this paper examines the question of whether households adjust savings in response to interest rates in a life cycle model with precautionary savings where both motives for saving retirement and precautionary are present while uncertainty may be the most important motive for younger households eventually households will start saving for retirement as well by how much the wealth of the median household at retirement changes after an exogenous permanent increase in the after tax interest rate is computed in an estimated life cycle model with precautionary savings the elasticity of savings is also very low however the results are sensitive to the utility parameters

politics and the structural dependence of the state in democratic capitalist nations i explore empirically a central claim of the structural dependence thesis namely that capitalists ability to disinvest fundamentally conditions policy choices in democratic capitalist systems utilizing time series data for 16 affluent democracies from 1965 to 1984 i find that indeed low rates of business investment are associated with reductions in corporate tax burdens and that these reductions are more pronounced in periods of economic crisis moreover low rates of capital formation engender cuts in personal income taxes during periods of economic stress however i also find that the magnitude of responsiveness of taxation to low rates of investment is relatively small and that analyses of the political context of investment and taxation indicate that governments have choices the responsiveness of corporate tax burdens to capital formation may under some governments be part of a policy mix designed to maintain adequate investment and to address the demands of core constituencies

positive time preference the case for positive time preference is absolutely compelling unless there is an infinite time horizon with the expectation of unending technological advance combined with what we call drastically diminishing marginal utility this finding holds both in the positive and normative senses a corollary is that savings are interest elastic

wage polarisation in the us and the flexibility debate the proportion of workers earning low wages in the american economy declined from 1963 through 1979 since 1979 both the low wage and the high wage shares of employment have increased leading to wage polarization analysis of current population survey data indicates that this occurred for both men and women for men this condition has been exacerbated by a secular stagnation in real median wages these empirical developments in the distribution of labor income are analyzed in detail and discussed in light of theoretical debates about employers attempts to increase labor flexibility under the pressure of declining profits copyright 1990 by oxford university press

endogenous completeness of diffusion driven equilibrium markets we study the existence of dynamic equilibria with endogenously complete markets in continuous time heterogenous agents economies driven by diffusion processes our main results show that under appropriate conditions on the transition density of the state variables market completeness can be deduced from the primitives of the economy in particular we prove that a sufficient condition for market completeness is that the volatility of dividends be invertible and provide higher order conditions that apply when this condition fails as is the case in the presence of fixed income securities in contrast to previous research our formulation does not require that securities pay terminal dividends and thus allows for both finite and infinite horizon economies

savings and wealth in models with altruistic bequests during recent years much attention has been given to the role of bequests in explaining various aspects of economic behavior for example authors have studied the impact of bequests on physical wealth accumulation laurence kotlikoff and lawrence summers 1981 the interest elasticity of savings owen evans 1983 tax reform laurence seidman 1984 and the distribution of wealth alan blinder 1976a more recently economists have begun to distinguish between human and physical bequests gary becker and nigel tomes 1986 acknowledging the presence of bequest in human form is important in analyzing each of the issues mentioned above outlays on children affect the shape of the family s labor supply and expenditure profiles upon which the level of aggregate savings crucially depends if these outlays are interest sensitive substitutes for physical bequests they will also influence the interest elasticity of savings in the area of tax reform the neutrality of the consumption tax depends on the ability of the government to identify human capital bequests from general consumption raymond batina 1987 if this is not possible the portfolio choice of investment in human versus physical capital may be distorted at the margin finally the unequal transmission of wealth across generations may be explained by the lack of physical bequests and the inefficiently low levels of human bequests made by wealthconstrained households becker and tomes 1986 to distinguish clearly the behavior of constrained households from unconstrained households who make sizeable physical bequests both types of bequests must be recognized this paper introduces a model that makes explicit examination of these issues possible it extends lord s 1989 multiperiod model of life cycle savings and adult human capital investment by adding altruistically motivated human and physical bequests 2 the model is calibrated using microeconomic data on earnings time and goods expenditures on children s human capital and physical bequests we then use the model to examine the contribution of bequests to wealth accumulation and the level of savings this topic is the source of an important but yet unresolved debate between franco modigliani 1988 and kotlikoff 1988 kotlikoff maintains that u s wealth accumulation is primarily the consequence of bequests as opposed to life cycle savings for retirement one type of evidence cited by kotlikoff comes from simulation results demonstrating the failure of realistically calibrated life cycle models to generate sufficiently high saving rates and wealth income ratios alan auerbach and kotlikoff 1987 we show however that if a pure life cycle

uncertain lifetime consumption and dissaving in retirement this paper asks whether the continued accumulation or mild dissaving observed among the retired can be explained by uncertain lifetime in the absence of annuities after an initial period influenced by borrowing constraints under constant relative risk aversion uncertain lifetime depresses consumption by a proportion increasing with age if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is small illustrative computations based on actual income and survival data show that plausible elasticities are sufficiently small to give this effect the reduction in consumption is large enough to explain much of the lack of decumulation by the elderly

uncertain parameter values and the choice among policy options abstract we use a tax policy example to show how debate on the value of an elasticity parameter translates into a debate about policy choices to construct this example suppose that the choice among four particular tax reform options is based on a single measure of efficiency gain for each reform we show how the size of this gain depends upon the elasticity of saving with respect to the net rate of return moreover within quite narrow and reasonable bounds for the elasticity parameter we find regions in which each of three different tax reforms turns out to dominate the others

growing unequal changes in the distribution of earnings across canadian cities this paper investigates changes in the distribution of earnings across 87 metropolitan areas in canada it does so using micro data taken from the 20 per cent long form sample of the census for the years 1996 2001 and 2006 results point to overall increases in urban inequality and to greater heterogeneity in inequality across the urban hierarchy with larger cities growing particularly unequal over time cross sectional and panel regression models suggest that city size unemployment deindustrialisation and the percentage of a city s population composed of visible minorities contribute to increased inequality in contrast a city s level of economic development has a mitigating effect on inequality although this effect appears to fade away over time the effects of changes in a city s age education and gender profiles on inequality are mixed

the consumption tax in the presence of altruistic cash and human capital bequests with endogenous fertility decisions abstract we provide an analysis of the consumption tax policy in the presence of cash bequests human capital investments in children and endogenous fertility decisions it is shown that the consumption tax is no longer neutral if the tax rate is constant over the taxpayer s life cycle labor supply is exogenous and the parent expects the offspring to pay the same tax rate if the number of children is chosen optimally by the parent neutrality breaks down because the shadow prices of both bequests and fertility are interlinked it is more expensive to produce a child the larger either bequest is and it is more expensive to make a bequest of either type to each child the larger the number of children produced several examples are provided where imposing the consumption tax induces an increase in the number of children produced and a decrease in net capital formation

reflections on critical realism in political economy this paper studies critical realism in political economy the focal points are two important tensions in critical realism the first tension relates generally to the status and importance of philosophy and the scope of critical realism the second tension relates specifically to critical realism in political economy firstly two perspectives within critical realism in political economy are separated a marxist current and a broad heterodox current secondly these two perspectives within critical realism are contrasted and discussed on the basis of a critical stance towards philosophical reductionism thirdly it is argued that reconciliation between central aspects of the two perspectives is both feasible and desirable and finally neo marxist political economy is pinpointed as a critical constructive and developmental mediation for critical realism in political economy copyright 2002 oxford university press

factor mobility and wage inequality in the presence of specialisation based external economies abstract by making use of a simple general equilibrium model that is relevant to a high income developing country or a newly industrialised country this paper examines the link between factor mobility and wage inequality it is shown that in the presence of specialisation based external economies emigration of skilled as well unskilled labour increases wage inequality even if the income shares of capital are identical across industries on the other hand outflow of capital decreases wage inequality

recent trends in top income shares in the usa reconciling estimates from march cps and irs tax return data although the majority of research on us income inequality trends is based on public use march cps data a new wave of research using irs tax return data reports substantially higher levels of inequality and faster growing trends we show that these apparently inconsistent estimates are largely reconciled if the inequality measure and the income distribution are defined in the same way using internal cps data for 1967 2006 we closely match irs data based estimates of top income shares reported by piketty and saez 2003 our results imply that any inequality increases since 1993 are concentrated among the top 1 percent of the distribution

using the pareto distribution to improve estimates of topcoded earnings i introduction the public use march current population survey cps is the primary source of data for tracking levels and trends in u s labor earnings and for understanding the factors which influence these trends literatures that have used cps earnings data are vast and include research on the changing returns to education or college major in the labor market autor 2014 gemici and wiswall 2014 earnings differentials across occupations glied ma and pearlstein 2015 earnings volatility hardy and ziliak 2014 elasticity of taxable income burns and ziliak forthcoming and more generally the causes of changes in wage structures and earnings inequality see e g autor katz and kearney 2008 card and dinardo 2002 goldin and katz 2007 juhn murphy and pierce 1993 acemoglu 2002 altonji and blank 1999 and katz and autor 1999 provide reviews of this literature however these literatures that use the public use cps data have been hampered by an attenuated view of the right tail of the labor earnings distribution due to the topcoding of high earnings in the public use cps data 1 importantly the failure to properly correct for inconsistent topcoding has been found to result in biased estimates for a range of outcomes including returns to education hubbard 2011 the size of the earnings gaps between gender and race groups burkhauser and larrimore 2009a the relative economic resources of individuals with and without disabilities burkhauser and larrimore 2009b and population level income inequality burkhauser et al 2012 to correct for topcoding biases public use cps based researchers have generally pursued one of four paths 1 ignoring the topcoding problem 2 making an ad hoc adjustment to topcoded earnings values 3 using a pareto distribution to estimate earnings at the top of the distribution or 4 using cell means or rank proximity swapped data that is based on the still censored internal cps data for example a common ad hoc technique based on estimates from pareto imputations of top earnings is to replace topcoded earnings with a multiple of the topcode threshold so all individuals with topcoded earnings in a year are assumed to have earnings at 1 3 1 4 or 1 5 times the topcode threshold autor katz and kearney 2008 juhn murphy and pierce 1993 katz and murphy 1992 lemieux 2006 however such an approach may misstate top earnings if the wrong multiple is used or if the appropriate multiple changes over time similarly researchers using a pareto imputation of top earnings may misstate those earnings if they are unable to obtain a reasonable fit for the pareto distribution when using available public use data making use of internal march cps files with their much higher censoring levels we show that previous ad hoc estimates and pareto estimations of top earnings based on public use data understate mean earnings at the top of the earnings distribution and hence also understate earnings inequality however as this internal data are also censored albeit at higher levels any results based purely on the internal data will also fail to capture a portion of the income at the very top of the distribution and therefore will also understate inequality hence while cell means based on internal data such as those produced by larrimore et al 2008 and the rank proximity swapped data series which the census began providing in 2010 each allow researchers to replicate results from the internal census data findings using these series will be subject to the same limitations and understatement of true top incomes as the internal values recognizing the limitations of the existing options to correct for topcoding we proceed by using a continuous maximum likelihood estimator along with internal cps data to produce a series of more accurate estimates of top earnings in the cps data our estimates start with actual top earnings from the internal cps combined with a pareto estimate using these data for internally censored observations

truncation bias and the measurement of income inequality 1988 truncation bias and the measurement of income inequality journal of business economic statistics vol 6 no 3 pp 335 337

truncation bias and the ordinal evaiuation of income inequality lorenz dominance analysis is used to examine the effect of top coding on the ordinal evaluation of u s income inequality across time current population survey microdata are adjusted for truncation bias and statistical inference procedures are used to examine biennial changes in unadjusted and adjusted lorenz curves beginning in 1985 the truncation bias has a significant effect on ordinal rankings of income inequality

income inequality income composition and macroeconomic trends israel 1979 93 the paper offers several explanations for income inequality trends in israel during 1979 93 two types of analysis are employed decomposition of the gini coefficient by income source and population sub group and time series regression on macroeconomic variables it is found that the slight increase in inequality over the period is a result of opposing forces and that the major difference between the inflation 1979 84 and stabilization 1985 93 periods is in the inequality reducing effect of direct taxes increasing in the first period while declining in the second unemployment had a regressive impact whereas inflation acted as a progressive tax in the first period but not in the second