individual taxpayer response to tax cuts 1982 1984 with implications for the revenue maximizing tax rate abstract this paper measures the response of taxpayers to the u s personal rate reductions from 1982 to 1984 a baseline income distribution is created to describe what level and distribution could be expected in the absence of tax changes comparison of this baseline with actual tax return data shows that at least one sixth and probably one quarter of the revenue ascribable to the rate reductions was recouped by changes in taxpayer behavior the data also show that federal income tax revenue would have been maximized at a tax rate of about 35 percent and total income tax revenue maximized at a total tax rate of about 40 percent

a model of educational investment decisions from a probit model of enrollments estimates of the expected net present value of post secondary education are developed for a sample of high school graduates based e xclusively on individual expectations of the relevant costs and benefits at the time of the enrollment decision the results are very plausible and consistent w ith rate of return estimates from studies which rely on ex post income data thi s suggests that students have rational expectationsand relatively good informat ion about future employment opportunities and other factors which determine the returns to educational investment copyright 1987 by mit press

the demand for college education in postwar japan since world war ii the number of japanese college applications has expanded at an impressive rate this paper concentrates on evaluating the extent to which economic factors underlie this expansion salient among the findings are results suggesting that an important segment of the population whom we call marginal investors respond sensitively to shortrun economic factors governing higher education these factors include direct college costs the household liquidity constraints and the probability of entering a large firm it also appears that the quality of college education has been an important determinant of postwar demand for college education in japan

existence and uniqueness of equilibrium in nonoptimal unbounded infinite horizon economies abstract in applied work in macroeconomics and finance nonoptimal infinite horizon economies are often studied in which the state space is unbounded important examples of such economies are single sector growth models with production externalities valued fiat money monopolistic competition and or distortionary government taxation although sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of markovian equilibrium are well known for the compact state space case no similar sufficient conditions exist for unbounded growth this paper provides such a set of sufficient conditions and presents a computational algorithm that will prove asymptotically consistent when computing markovian equilibrium

time consistency and bureaucratic budget competition high employment protection in the public sector results in strategic over employment if government divisions compete for budgets in a dynamic setting bureaucrats who are interested in maximising their divisions output employ excess labour since this induces the sponsor to provide complementary inputs in the future restrictions on hiring decisions in the public sector can be regarded as provisions to reduce strategic hiring we also provide evidence from a survey of decision makers in a public sector bureaucracy with very high employment protection the results confirm that decision makers are aware of the strategic effects of their hiring decisions on budget allocation 2008 the author s journal compilation royal economic society 2008

the role of expectations in adolescent schooling choices do youths respond to economic incentives i introduction over the postwar period the level of education attained by individuals in nations of the organisation for economic co operation and development has increased steadily this is especially true for the united states 1 in 1950 for example the average american aged 25 or older had 9 3 years of education by 2000 this had increased to 12 7 years this increase reflects sizable increases in the rate of high school completion in the cohort aged 16 24 in 1960 more than 27 were counted as high school dropouts by 2001 the proportion of high school dropouts in this age cohort had fallen to 10 7 although the proportion of whites in any given age cohort who graduated high school has exceeded that for african americans over this period this gap narrowed significantly during the 1970s and 1980s and by 2000 had nearly closed 2 observed trends in and patterns of educational attainment human capital accumulation and labor market success are determined by several factors in addition to changes in a wide variety of background factors such as ability motivation race and gender these involve decisions made by governments as reflected in school resources and macroeconomic performance and by parents e g parental education work effort and child care time also relevant are the choices made by adolescents themselves in response to the net economic returns of the options open to them in this article we explore the schooling choices of youths in response to their perception of these returns economic and sociological research on the determinants of the schooling outcomes of youths is extensive and distinguished 3 these studies focus primarily on the family neighborhood and peer group determinants of educational attainments and are largely reduced form in nature the role of youth preferences and the choices made in response to the economic incentives and constraints that young people face have not been systematically explored in these studies hence their results may attribute to background and family characteristics effects properly attributed to differences in youths own choices in response to the incentives that they face 4 in this study we address the role of youths own choice conditioned expectations in understanding their schooling choices by constructing a choice or switching model we emphasize the effect of individual student perceptions regarding the returns associated with graduating from high school versus dropping out while controlling for an extensive set of family and community factors youths are presumed to form their expectations by referring to the outcomes of a slightly older cohort of individuals who have characteristics similar to their own because these expected income returns are choice specific we require estimates of each youth s choice conditioned expected returns taken to be unobserved by the analyst but known by the youth 5 we focus on the high school graduation outcome for three reasons first individuals must complete high school to consider postsecondary schooling options hence the decision to complete high school carries with it an option value benefit 6 second high school completion the first schooling decision over which adolescents have some control plays a crucial role in understanding the declining labor market position of low skilled workers 7 finally our analysis of the high school graduation choice is nested within an extensive economic literature that addresses the determinants of this outcome by focusing on the role of youth s own expectations we have neglected other aspects of a complete analysis of the process of educational attainment for example we presume that our extensive set of family and neighborhood factors are exogenous to the outcome and independent of unobserved factors although we do not explicitly include school characteristics in our estimation our detailed neighborhood and family variables are likely to accurately proxy for neighborhood school quality

optimal capital income taxation with incomplete markets borrowing constraints and constant discounting for a wide class of infinitely lived agent models chamley has shown that the optimal capital income tax rate is zero in the long run lucas has argued that for the u s economy there is a significant welfare gain from switching to this policy this paper shows that for the bewley class of models with incomplete insurance markets and borrowing constraints the optimal tax rate on capital income is positive even in the long run therefore cutting the capital income tax to zero may well lead to welfare losses

optimal taxation in models of endogenous growth we study the problem of optimal taxation in three infinite horizon representative agent endogenous growth models the first model is a convex model in which physical and human capital are perfectly symmetric our second model incorporates elastic labor supply through a lucas style technology analysis of these two models points out the danger of assuming that government expenditures are exogenous in our third model we include government expenditures as a productive input in capital formation showing that the limiting tax rate on capital is no longer zero in numerical simulations we find similar effects on growth and welfare in all three models

how responsive is higher education the linkages between higher education and the labour market higher education is considered vital for developing a productive and dynamic labour force to meet the demands of the global economy how effectively does the us higher education sector respond to labour market signals we match us postsecondary degree completions from 1984 to 2008 with occupational employment statistics and employ an instrumental variable iv strategy to examine the supply response to changes in occupation specific demand the supply of educated workers appears weakly responsive to short term wage signals and moderately responsive to long term employment conditions analysis reveals a sizeable degree of heterogeneity and lag in the responsiveness across specific occupation degree pairings failure to respond rapidly to changes in labour demand may be one factor driving inequality in wages across occupations and in the aggregate economy we suggest some simple policy measures to help increase the responsiveness of the higher education sector both in terms of the output of specific degree

incumbent employees resistance to implementing privatization policy abstract the recent anti privatization trend in latin america france and south africa is a reminder that employees resist privatization because pre privatization firms tend to be over manned and to pay excessive wages we study the effect of employees resistance on the successful implementation of privatization in a stylized model in which the government interacts with employees of an unknown type the analysis clarifies some of the difficulties associated with the implementation process furthermore although common sense dictates that the government negotiates with the employees before finding an outside buyer we show that sometimes it is better off contacting an investor first

the demand for education for home production this paper analyzes a type of education thus far ignored in the literature non credit adult education to enhance home production skills in the analysis we test whether such education behaves as an investment in home productivity and also compare the differences between demands for home productivity enhancing education and labor market enhancing education results on four adult cohorts indicate that both types of schooling have investment components although there are also significant differences in the two demand functions results also indicate that the two types of education are complementary rather than substitute activities

on non existence of markov equilibria in competitive market economies abstract this paper presents some examples of regular dynamic economies with externalities and taxes that either lack existence of a markov equilibrium or such equilibrium is not continuous these examples pose further challenges for the analysis and computation of these economies journal of economic literature classification numbers c10 c62

tax disturbances and real economic activity in the postwar united states abstract this paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of cyclical fluctuations in marginal tax rates it finds that systematically including tax variables in a standard real business cycle model substantially improves the model s ability to reproduce basic facts about postwar u s business cycle fluctuations in particular modeling fluctuations in personal and corporate income tax rates increases the model s predicted relative variability of hours and decreases its predicted correlation between hours and average productivity fluctuations in tax rates produce large substitution effects that alter the leisure labor supply decision

on the possibility of an inverse relationship between tax rates and government revenues abstract when arthur laffer and other supply side advocates plot total tax revenue as a function of a particular tax rate they draw an upward sloping segment called the normal range followed by a downward sloping segment called the prohibitive range a brief literature review indicates that tax rates on the prohibitive range in theoretical and empirical models have been the result of particularly high tax rates high elasticity parameters or both the labor tax rate which maximizes total revenue for example will depend on the assumed labor supply elasticity this paper introduces a new curve which summarizes the tax rate and elasticity combinations that result in maximum revenues separating the normal area from the prohibitive area a general purpose empirical u s general equilibrium model is used to plot the laffer curve for several elasticities and to plot the newly introduced curve using the labor tax example results indicate that the u s could conceivably be operating in the prohibitive area but that the tax wedge or labor supply elasticity would have to be much higher than most estimates would suggest

stability global dynamics and markov equilibrium in models of endogenous economic growth abstract this paper studies the local and global dynamics of two sector models of endogenous growth with economy wide external effects and taxes on capital and labor the local analysis classifies the parameter space depending on the number of stationary solutions and local stability of equilibria the global analysis shows that if taxes are within certain bounds and the size of the external effects on the average level of human capital is smaller than the share of physical capital the equilibrium path is monotone and therefore a continuous markov equilibrium can be constructed

uniqueness of an equilibrium in infinite horizon economies subject to taxes and externalities abstract this paper verifies the uniqueness of an equilibrium for a class of stochastic infinite horizon economies with capital that are subject to distortionary taxes or externalities the proof develops the property of concavity for a nonlinear monotone operator whose fixed points correspond to equilibria as the underlying monotone operator has been useful for establishing the existence of an equilibrium and for computing an equilibrium this approach also brings under one roof the study of existence uniqueness and approximation of an equilibrium in distorted economies journal of economic literature classification numbers c60 h20

growth effects of flat rate taxes recent estimates of the potential growth effects of tax reform vary wildly ranging from zero to eight percentage points using an endogenous growth model we assess which model features and parameter values are important for determining the quantitative impact of tax reform we find that the critical parameters are factor shares depreciation rates the elasticity of intertemporal substitution and the elasticity of labor supply the elasticities of substitution in production on the other hand are relatively unimportant the quantitative estimates in several recent papers are compared with each other and with some of the evidence from u s experience we find that robert lucas s conclusion that tax reform would have little or no effect on the u s growth rate is theoretically robust and consistent with the evidence

optimal fiscal policy in a business cycle model this paper develops the quantitative implications of optimal fiscal policy in a business cycle model in a stationary equilibrium the ex ante tax rate on capital income is approximately zero there is an equivalence class of ex post capital income tax rates and bond policies that support a given allocation within this class the optimal ex post capital tax rates can range from close to independently and identically distributed to close to a random walk the tax rate on labor income fluctuates very little and inherits the persistence properties of the exogenous shocks thus there is no presumption that optimal labor tax rates follow a random walk most of the welfare gains realized by switching from a tax system like that of the united states to the ramsey system come from an initial period of high taxation on capital income

the determinants of educational attainment modeling and estimating the human capital model and education production functions this paper develops and estimates a theoretical model of an individual s high school graduation choice the model incorporates the idea of a utility maximizing youth responding to the economic incentives associated with incremental education as posited by the human capital literature however it also allows for family neighborhood and school characteristics to affect the process of being educated as posited by the education production function literature estimation of the model using the panel study of income dynamics psid supplemented with neighborhood and school data indicates that indeed students respond to economic incentives in making education choices however most of the effects of background characteristics are working through the education process rather than affecting returns to schooling

a quantitative analysis of capital income taxation this paper studies the quantitative impact of eliminating capital income taxation on capital accumulation and steady state welfare in a general equilibrium model with overlapping generations of sixty five period lived individuals who face idiosyncratic earnings risk borrowing constraints and life span uncertainty under a wide range of parameter configurations the capital income tax rate that maximizes steady state welfare is positive even though eliminating it completely would raise the steady state capital stock toward the golden rule this is because the tax burden is shifted toward the younger and liquidity constrained years reducing the individuals ability to self insure copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

current real business cycle theories and aggregate labor market fluctuations hours worked and the return to working are weakly correlated traditionally the ability to account for this fact has been a litmus test for macroeconomic models existing real business cycle models fail this test dramatically we modify prototypical real business cycle models by allowing government consumption shocks to influence labor market dynamics this modification can in principle bring the models into closer conformity with the data our empirical results indicate that it does

the optimal taxation of asset income when government consumption is endogenous theory estimation and welfare this paper derives the ramsey optimal policy for taxing asset income in a model where government expenditure is a function of net output or the inputs that produce it extending judd 1999 i demonstrate that the canonical result that the optimal tax on capital income is zero in the medium to long term is a special case of a more general model employing a vector error correction model to estimate the relationship between government consumption and net output or the factor inputs that generate it for the united states between 1948q1 to 2015q4 i demonstrate that this special case is empirically implausible and show how a cointegrating vector can be used to determine the optimal tax schedule i simulate a version of the model using the empirical estimates to measure the welfare implications of changing the tax rate on asset income and contrast these results with those generated in a version of the model where government consumption is purely exogenous the shifting pattern of welfare measurements con rms the theoretical results i calculate that the prevailing effective tax rate on net asset income in the us between 1970 and 2014 averaged 0 449 hence abolishing the tax completely does generate welfare improvements though only by the equivalent of between 1 103 and 1 616 percent permanent increase in consumption well under half the implied welfare benefit when the endogeneity of the government consumption is ignored the maximum welfare improvement from shifting part of the burden of tax from capital to labor is the equivalent of a permanent increase in consumption of between only 1 491 and 1 858 and is attained when the tax rate on asset income is lowered to between 0 148 and 0 186 allowing the tax rate to vary over time raises the maximum welfare bene t to 1 865 all the results are very robust to a wide range of elasticities of labor supply

redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model abstract we investigate the redistributive potential of capital taxation in an intertemporal maximizing model of capital formation first even unanticipated redistributive capital taxation is severely limited in its effectiveness since it depresses wages second under any convergent redistributive tax policy which maximizes a paretian social objective the capital income tax will converge to zero independent of the factor supply elasticities these results are independent of workers holdings of capital

equilibria in distorted infinite horizon economies with capital and labor abstract this paper studies a broad class of infinite horizon economies that are subject to externalities taxes or other distortions these economies are formulated in discrete time are subject to uncertainty and consist of households that accumulate capital and elastically supply labor for this class of economies methods are developed for proving the existence of an equilibrium for characterizing an equilibrium and for verifying at a computational level that an equilibrium is unique some applications of these methods to real and monetary economies are discussed journal of economic literature classification numbers c6 e6

welfare and optimum dynamic taxation of consumption and income abstract this paper estimates that the us could attain large welfare gains by implementing an optimal ramsey tax policy that taxes consumption and income it is also found that the welfare implications associated with taxing consumption are quantitatively more important than those associated with dynamically taxing income indeed replacing income taxes with a constant consumption tax leads to a welfare gain that is only slightly lower than that attained by a dynamic policy that taxes consumption and income in computing these welfare gains careful attention is given to the dynamic path of tax rates and the transitional dynamics associated with how the economy responds to a new tax policy

existence and uniqueness of equilibrium in distorted dynamic economies with capital and labor abstract in this paper we provide a set of sufficient conditions under which recursive competitive equilibrium exists and is unique for a large class of distorted dynamic equilibrium models with capital and elastic labor supply we develop a lattice based approach to the problem the class of economies for which we are able to obtain our existence and uniqueness result is considerably larger than those considered in previous work we conclude by applying the new results to some important examples of monetary economies often used in applied work journal of economic literature classification numbers c62 d51 d90 e10

on the existence of nonoptimal equilibria in dynamic stochastic economies abstract the question of the existence of the stationary equilibrium for distorted versions of the standard neo classical growth model is addressed in this paper the conditions presented guaranteeing the existence of nontrivial equilibrium for the class of economies under study are simple and intuitively appealing while the existence proof developed is elementary examples are given illustrating that economies with distortional taxation endogenous growth with externalities and monopolistic competition can all fit into the framework provided journal of economic literature classification numbers c62 e30 e60

tax analysis in a real business cycle model on measuring harberger triangles and okun gaps abstract a tax distorted real business cycle model is parameterized calibrated and solved numerically in an attempt to measure the size of harberger triangles relative to okun gaps in particular the model constructed is used to study quantitatively the impact of various distortional government tax and subsidy schemes it is shown that the government can use tax policy to stabilize cyclical fluctuations and this is done for the economy being studied the benefits of implementing such a stabilization policy are calculated and compared with the size of the welfare gains realized from reducing various tax distortions

introduction to a general equilibrium approach to economic growth abstract endogenous growth theory has had some success in explaining the observed data related to the process of economic growth however the results of the models in this literature are typically very sensitive to their micro economic structure it is therefore important to understand how the growth process behaves under more general specifications of such features as the number of commodities the number and preferences of consumers the factors of production and the financial and information structures in other words valuable insights can be gained by integrating growth theory into the framework of general equilibrium theory the summary of the papers in this volume focuses on seven issues that are crucial to this integration and highlights the contributions of the papers to the resolution of these issues journal of economic literature classification numbers c61 d50 d90 f43 o30 o41

the efficiency gains from dynamic tax reform this paper presents a new simulation methodology for determining the pure efficiency gains from tax reform along the general equilibrium rational expectations growth path of life cycle economies the principal findings concern the effects of switching from a proportional income tax with rates similar to those in the u s to either a proportional tax on consumption or a proportional tax on labor income a switch to consumption taxation generates a sustainable welfare gain of almost 2 percent of lifetime resources in contrast a transition to wage taxation generates a loss of greater than percent of lifetime re sources a second general result is that even a mild degree of progressivity in the income tax system imposes a very large efficiency cost this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the macroeconomic effects of distortionary taxation abstract prescott 1986 estimates that technology shocks account for 75 of the fluctuations in the postwar u s economy this paper reestimates the contribution of technological change for a standard business cycle model that includes a public sector and fiscal disturbances i find that a significant fraction of the variance of aggregate consumption investment output capital stock and hours of work can be explained by disturbances in labor and capital tax rates and government consumption i also use the model to quantify the welfare costs of capital and labor taxation for both the time series and welfare calculations maximum likelihood estimates of taste technology and policy parameters are used

the effect of marginal tax rates on taxable income a panel study of the 1986 tax reform act this paper uses a treasury department panel of more than 4 000 taxpayers to estimate the sensitivity of taxable income to changes in tax rates on the basis of a comparison of the tax returns of the same individual taxpayers before and after the 1986 tax reform the analysis emphasizes that the response of taxable income involves much more than a change in the traditional measures of labor supply the evidence shows an elasticity of taxable income with respect to the marginal net of tax rate that is at least one and could be substantially higher the implications for recent tax rate changes are discussed

average marginal tax rates from social security and the individual income tax we extend previous estimates of the average marginal tax rate from the federal individual income tax to include social security our computations consider the tax rates on employers employees and the self employed the income that accrues to persons with earnings below the ceiling and the effective deductibility of employers social security contributions from workers taxable income the next effect of social security on the average marginal tax rate is below 02 until 1966 but then rises to 03 in 1968 04 in 1973 05 in 1974 06 in 1979 and 07 in 1982 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

trade and the environment with pre existing subsidies a dynamic general equilibrium analysis abstract countries that wish to erect trade barriers have a variety of instruments at their disposal in addition to tariffs and quotas countries can offer tax relief low interest financing reduced regulation and other subsidies to domestic industries facing foreign competition in a trade agreement countries typically agree to reduce not only tariffs but also subsidies we consider the effect of a free trade agreement on pollution emissions we show that while reducing tariffs may indeed increase output and pollution reductions in some subsides required by the trade agreement reduce pollution in general equilibrium for reasonable parameter values reducing subsidies has three effects on pollution 1 reducing subsidies to firms reduces pollution causing capital accumulation 2 if subsidized firms are more pollution intensive then reducing subsides moves capital and labor from more to less pollution intensive firms and 3 reducing subsidies concentrates production in more productive firms increasing output and thus pollution we derive straightforward conditions for which 1 and 2 outweigh 3 we then calibrate the model to china in 1997 and find that pollution has a more elastic response to reducing subsidies than to reducing tariffs while a 5 reduction in tariffs increases all pollutants by approximately 1 a 5 reduction in subsidies reduces pollution by 1 8 11 6 depending on the pollutant the reductions in pollution occur without any environmental side agreements or abatement policy changes

economic incentives and the demand for higher education to what extent do economic incentives affect the demand for higher education this question is addressed by means of a time series analysis of the demand for university education in sweden the bulk of the variation in the fraction of qualified individuals enrolled at universities is attributed to fluctuations in the university wage premium furthermore relative employment prospects for university graduates and variations in the generosity of the study allowance scheme appear to be of importance for the enrollment decision

supply side economics and endogenous growth abstract in a simple convex model of endogenous growth the expansionary effects of a deficit financed tax cut are often strong enough to allow the government debt to be paid off in the long run without the need for subsequent tax increases a permanent and substantial reduction in marginal rates of income taxation can provide for both vigorous real economic growth and long run government budget balance

privatization labor and social safety nets privatization promotes economic efficiency and growth thereby reinforcing macroeconomic adjustment in the short run however it can lead to job losses and wage cuts for workers this paper discusses these adverse impacts of privatization in terms of various methods of privatization and surveys the existing empirical evidence it finds that public sales and auctions can have stronger negative effects on workers but maximize the government s revenue policymakers options for mitigating the social impact of privatization are surveyed copyright 2001 by blackwell publishers ltd

swedish tax rates labor supply and tax revenues effective marginal tax rates on labor income for the representative swede have increased from roughly 50 percent in 1959 to 80 percent today the effects of this increase in the level of taxation are examined using a two sector model parameterized to correspond to the swedish economy the model contains a single household which allocates labor to either taxed essentially market or untaxed largely household uses the estimated long run effects are sufficient to explain up to 75 percent of the recent decline in the measured growth rate of the swedish gnp calculations of total tax revenues are also derived from the model these peak when the tax rate is approximately 70 percent indicating that sweden is presently on the downward sloping portion of its laffer curve

a framework for analyzing the impact of cohort size on education and labor earning the paper analyzes three models of labor demand solving for the change in wages of a given labor group due to a change in the size of a birth cohort when the production function includes age schooling groups as separate factors an increase in the size of one birth cohort changes the size of several labor market groups also in this case the demand effect of changing factor size is joined by a supply effect of changing schooling proportions ignoring the supply effect may cause us to overestimate the effect of a large birth cohort on wages of young skilled workers

equilibrium in a production economy with an income tax this paper develops a method to study an infinite horizon production economy distorted by a state dependent income tax this setting permits taxes to depend on the capital stock an endogenous state variable and thus captures situations where the evolution for capital and taxes is jointly determined to solve this model the consumption function is represented as a fixed point of a nonlinear monotone operator that is defined such that its nth iteration computes the consumption function n steps away from the horizon for a corresponding finite horizon economy the oparator s monotonicity is exploited in proving the existence of and constructing an equilibrium copyright 1991 by the econometric society

using propensity matching estimators to evaluate the impact of privatization on wages whether the transfer of ownership rights to the private sector leads to a decline or increase in wage growth is theoretically ambiguous given that the outcome depends on the uncertain interaction between firms and workers using propensity matching techniques this article investigates the effects of privatization on wages in the portuguese banking industry the empirical results obtained from quadros de pessoal for the period between 1989 and 1997 generally show a negative positive short run long run effect of privatization on relative wage growth for both men and women retained in the privatized firms moreover the results show that the most educated and experienced oldest workers as well as those in the high skill occupational categories were more likely to experience a negative wage effect

the welfare cost of capital income taxation in a growing economy the welfare cost of capital income taxation is analyzed in a general equilibrium framework where the private sector is represented by a competitive household endowed with perfect foresight and an infinite life the value of the welfare cost depends essentially on the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor in the production function numerical estimates are presented for different values of the parameters of the model the welfare gain obtained by the abolition of the capital income tax is smaller when the private sector is not endowed with perfect foresight it is reduced by about 40 percent when expectations are myopic the allocation efficiency cost of the corporate tax dwarfs the intertemporal welfare cost

uniqueness of markov equilibrium in stochastic olg models with nonclassical production a large class of stochastic olg economies with nonclassical production is shown to possess a unique markov equilibrium me which is also the unique sequential equilibrium additional properties such as monotonicity continuity and smoothness of the me are also discussed

optimal taxation of capital income in general equilibrium with infinite lives this paper analyzes the optimal tax on capital income in general equilibrium models of the second best agents have infinite lives and utility functions which are extensions from the koopmans form the population is heterogeneous the important property of the models is the equality between the social and the private discount rates in the long run i find that the optimal tax rate is zero in the long run for a special case of additively separable utility functions i then determine the tax rates along the dynamic path and conditions that are sufficient for the local stability of the steady state

the welfare cost of factor taxation in a perfect foresight model this paper examines the marginal efficiency cost of various factor taxes in a dynamic general equilibrium model the au thor solves for the excess burden of anticipated and unanticipated t emporary and permanent tax policies using a range of estimates for taste and technology parameters he finds excess burdens larger than those indicated by previous studies that use static models these exc ess burdens are sensitive to parameter values and timing however th e rankings of alternative tax policies turn out to be insensitive to structural parameter values copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

the business cycle human capital accumulation nexus and its effect on hours worked volatility abstract this paper studies hours worked volatility and the cyclicality of human capital investments by embedding a ben porath life cycle model of human capital accumulation into an rbc setting agents differ across two dimensions age and productivity in learning our results show that individuals invest more in human capital during economic downturns however human capital accumulation is more counter cyclical for young and low productivity individuals because they face a lower opportunity cost of education and a higher marginal product of human capital these results are confirmed empirically using us data from the current population survey and the american time use survey in addition the paper contributes to the rbc literature by showing that the model s business cycle properties in particular hours worked volatility are sensitive to assumptions of heterogeneity introducing heterogeneity in productivity increases the volatility of aggregate hours worked and changes the life cycle profile for hours volatility to better match the data